Arkansas Senate panel passes bill to prohibit discrimination; citizens say it would do the opposite

Yahoo

29-01-2025

Sen. Clarke Tucker (right), D-Little Rock, asks questions about Senate Bill 3 from bill sponsor Sen. Dan Sullivan (left), R-Jonesboro, during a Senate Committee on State Agencies and Governmental Affairs meeting on Tuesday, January 28, 2025. (Tess Vrbin/Arkansas Advocate)
After two and a half hours of debate, an Arkansas Senate panel approved a bill Tuesday that would 'prohibit discrimination or preferential treatment' by public entities.
Senate Bill 3, similar to a bill that failed in 2023, would repeal requirements that state procurement proposals include language that encourages minority participation or to adopt an equal opportunity hiring program designed to increase the percentage of minority employees.
The bill would also eliminate required minority recruitment and retention plans and reports from public school districts and higher education institutions, as well as amending a scholarship designed to attract qualified minority teachers to the Delta, a rural area with a significant Black population and a known teacher shortage.
While the bill does not include the phrase 'diversity, equity and inclusion,' a phrase often abbreviated as DEI in the language of business and government, the bill would strike the three individual words from state law several times over.
For example, the Equity Assistance Center in the state's Division of Elementary and Secondary Education would be called the Equality Assistance Center. Its purpose would be to assist the state's public school districts with 'desegregation and nondiscrimination' instead of 'affirmative action, program accessibility, human relations, awareness, and desegregation' as currently required.
The bill would also strike the term 'civil rights' from state law three times and replace the phrase with 'desegregation and nondiscrimination.'
Arkansas senator promises to kill DEI at state higher-ed institutions
Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan of Jonesboro is sponsoring the bill and has been an outspoken critic of DEI initiatives, which have become a target for conservative lawmakers nationwide since the 2023 U.S. Supreme Court decision that struck down the use of affirmative action in college admissions. Senate Bill 3 would apply to the state's higher education institutions.
Sullivan told the Senate Committee on State Agencies and Governmental Affairs that existing state policy encourages employers to prioritize traits such as race and ethnicity over job qualifications.
'We are focusing on merit, and we're going to hire on merit who's the best for that area,' Sullivan said. 'I think we've kind of lost our focus on what merit means.'
SB 3 contains much of the same language as a bill Sullivan sponsored two years ago to end state-sponsored affirmative action, which he also described as ending discrimination.
That bill, Senate Bill 71, narrowly passed the Senate in March 2023 but died on the House floor after several passionate speeches from members of both parties.
Sen. Clarke Tucker, D-Little Rock, noted during Tuesday's committee meeting that all 18 senators — the minimum number for a bill to pass the chamber — who voted for SB71 in 2023 were white men.
White men comprise most of the state Legislature, including all eight members of the State Agencies committee, and much of the executive branch, noted civil rights attorney Austin Porter Jr., who opposed the bill along with nine other speakers. They said they opposed the bill because it would remove opportunities for populations that have historically faced discrimination.
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects people from employment discrimination on the basis of 'race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.' Senate Bill 3 has similar language but replaces 'religion' with 'ethnicity.'
The text of the bill would allow anyone 'who believes his or her rights have been impacted under this section' to file a civil lawsuit, and a judge that sides with the plaintiff would issue an injunction and allow the plaintiff to recover court costs and attorneys' fees.
The bill would give 'reparations' to 'white people who feel like they've been victimized by some preferential treatment that's nonexistent,' Porter said, adding that Black Americans have spent years advocating for reparations for the nation's history of enslavement.
''Merit,' in a lot of people's minds, means simply white,' Porter said.
Lance LeVar, a former Arkansas Department of Education employee, disputed Sullivan's statement that unqualified minority job candidates have advantages over qualified candidates.
'What equity [does] is it looks at everybody and recognizes the merit that everybody's done, the work that they've taken… and it recognizes that others have to work harder,' LeVar said.
Other opponents of the bill included representatives from Stand Up Arkansas and Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families.
Tucker asked Sullivan 'who is harmed' by minority teacher recruitment programs. Sullivan repeatedly said such programs are discriminatory.
'One could also ask who's being helped, and it's just a circular argument,' Sullivan said.
Tucker, the committee's only Democrat, and Sen. Alan Clark, R-Lonsdale, voted against the bill.
Clark said he supported the premise of the bill but was concerned it would hurt schools' ability to recruit Black male teachers. He said Black male students need to be able to see themselves in their teachers in order to improve their educational outcomes.
'What I'm looking at here is not a racial preference or discriminatory, but something we need,' Clark said.
Sullivan said he understood Clark's point but also said the state should align its policies with the federal government.
Senate Bill 3 differs from its 2023 predecessor with the addition of language explicitly stating that the legislation is not meant to affect preferences provided to veterans under law based on their status as veterans.
Tucker asked why preferential treatment should be allowed for one group but outlawed for other groups. Sullivan repeated that the bill would align the state with federal policy.
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President Trump's executive order, signed within two days of his inauguration last week, declaring an end to all DEI 'mandates, policies, programs, preferences, and activities' in the federal government. Trump also put all federal DEI employees on paid leave and ordered agencies to cancel DEI training and contracts.
When asked about the bill at a press conference Tuesday, Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders said she hopes lawmakers consider 'anything that brings Arkansas further into compliance with where federal law and federal statute land.'
However, executive orders do not change federal law in and of themselves, and states have the responsibility to check and balance the power of the federal government by ensuring that federal policies 'meet the unique needs of their citizens,' said Dr. Gail Choate of the nonpartisan Arkansas Civic Action Network.
Choate added that passing Senate Bill 3 would be 'solving a problem that we don't know exists.' She said Walmart executives could not offer data to the Arkansas Legislative Black Caucus on Monday when asked to justify the company's rollback of its DEI policies. The Bentonville-based retailer is among several corporations that have done this in recent months.
Another provision in SB 3 would eliminate the state's requirement for bids for certain public improvement contracts exceeding $75,000 to include statements encouraging the participation of minority- and women-owned businesses.
Knowingly violating the bill would result in a Class A misdemeanor. Conway resident Jimmie Cavin said the bill needed more 'teeth' and that was why he opposed a policy he otherwise agreed with.
The only supporter of the bill who spoke was Robert Steinbuch, a University of Arkansas at Little Rock law professor.
'Either you're an affirmative action employer or you're an equal opportunity employer,' he said. 'You can't be both.'
Deputy Editor Antoinette Grajeda contributed to this article.