Assistant Attorney General For Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon testified before a Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday about the dangers of using Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) practices in the federal government.
Committee Chairman Eric Schmitt (R-MO) began the hearing by saying that “For at least the last decade, America’s civil rights laws have been used not to prohibit discrimination but to institutionalize it…It slunk in through the backdoor cloaked in bureaucratic double-speak and soothing euphemisms.”
Dhillon testified that, based on one of President Donald Trump’s early executive orders, her department has been working to end DEI and antisemitism in the federal government and at other organizations.
She referenced the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights, which recently sparred with Harvard University over antisemitism among students and staff. Dhillon also referenced the federal government’s legal action against many state governments — including California and Oregon — which have defied the Trump administration’s anti-DEI directive.
“The goal is clear: either DEI will end on its own, or we will kill it,” Dhillon said.
Ranking Member Peter Welch (D-VT) disagreed with Schmitt and Dhillon, saying “The question before this Congress is whether we’re going to save the Civil Rights Division or we’re going to destroy it.”
Welch alleged that the Department of Justice, namely the civil rights division that Dhillon leads, operated at the whim of Trump rather than the Constitution.
Welch brought Alabama State Senator Robert Stewart (D) to testify about the Justice Department’s cancellation of funds to install a septic system in poor parts of the state over DEI practices, accusing the department of intentionally harming poor black communities.
Stewart testified that “DEI initiatives are not preferences or perks. They are attempts to rectify generations of exclusion and ensure equal access to opportunity.” He continued by saying that ‘to eliminate these efforts under the guise of enforcing civil rights is to misinterpret history and undermine justice.”
Gene Hamilton, the president of America First Legal — a nonprofit aimed in part at eliminating DEI practices — responded later that “The civil rights division of the Department of Justice does not need to be involved with septic tanks. That is not a civil rights issue.”
Senator John Kennedy (R-LA) spoke about how he sees the real meaning of DEI. He said that “When someone says ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ — we’re talking about quotas.”
“The American people understand that souls have no color,” Kennedy added. “They believe that to a bear we all taste the same — like chicken.”
Schmitt recently cosponsored a bill aimed at strengthening Title VII to include the discrimination against those who express the belief in two genders as unlawful. In February, Schmitt also introduced legislation to codify Trump’s anti-DEI executive orders. Neither bill has reached the Senate floor as of yet.
Senator Mazie Hirono (D-HI) touted her counter-resolution to Schmitt’s anti-DEI bills, “A resolution affirming that diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility are fundamental values of the United States and emphasizing the ongoing need to address discrimination and inequality in the workplace, pre-K through 12th grade and higher education systems, government programs, the military, and our society.”
“My Republican colleagues are intent on teaching young people that people different from them are to be feared, mistrusted, and treated with suspicion,” Hirono said.
She continued, “This country was built by slaves dragged here against their will from a continent they would never see again. So we have always struggled with racism and exclusion in our country.”
