08-02-2025
Eliminating DEI at state level draws plenty of pushback
Feb. 7—President Donald Trump needed just his pen on a sweeping executive order to end federal diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs, but a conservative Republican ran into a storm of opposition last week with his attempt to achieve the same result in state government.
On Capitol Hill, U.S. Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kansas, picked up on Trump's unsubstantiated claim that DEI may have factored in the midair collision that killed 67 people near Washington's Ronald Reagan National Airport on Jan. 30.
"What I think you're going to find is there were a lot of qualified White men that they were not hiring because they were holding spots for DEI hires," Marshall said.
Local officials in Concord and Manchester have had to defend their own DEI initiatives against critics who charge they are a waste of money and seek to solve a problem that doesn't exist.
At the State House, the legislation (HB 392) from Rep. Mike Belcher, R-Wakefield, would dismantle the Office of Health Equity in the state Department of Health and Human Services, the civil rights and environmental justice functions in the Department of Environmental Services and the Governor's Council on Diversity and Inclusion.
Belcher charged that when vaccines and antibodies were in short supply at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, state officials set aside supplies for minority groups in the state based on "skin color."
"These programs ought to be looked at as both unlawful and unconstitutional," Belcher told the House Health, Human Services and Elderly Affairs Committee. "These concepts have been roundly rejected by the American people and the voters of New Hampshire. They are punitive, discriminatory and divisive."
Yet over a 2 1/2 -hour public hearing, every speaker following Belcher warned that getting rid of these programs would cost the state nearly $100 million in federal support while cutting off a lifeline of services that legal refugees, the disabled and low-income residents depend upon for survival.
Health impact
Belcher was surely not going to sway one member of this key House committee, two-term Rep. Trinidad Telez, D-Manchester.
For a decade including the onset of COVID, Telez was the director of the Office of Health Equity. Telez told Belcher the office's work was upheld twice in court against lawsuits that charged it had practiced bias in its delivery of care.
"Do you have any evidence that discrimination exists here in New Hampshire?" Telez asked Belcher. "There can be no quality of care if we fail to address equity."
There were 30 who endorsed Belcher's bill online while 2,820 opposed it.
Isadora Rodriguez-Legendre is executive director of the New Hampshire Council on Developmental Disabilities.
"We don't want to blanketly eliminate anything just because it has the word equity and justice in it," Rodriguez-Legendre said. "People with disabilities have a significant need for coordination of care and those needs can only be met by equitable access to services and information."
During the pandemic, the Office of Health Equity deployed mobile vans that brought vaccines and other health services to rural parts of the state and urban neighborhoods where low-income residents lacked transportation to make a doctor or hospital visit.
"For example: Are patients able to access appointments? Do they have transportation? Do they need hearing or vision accommodation? Can they follow up with medications, physical and behavioral health therapy, and prescriptions?" asked Cathy Stratton, CEO of the New Hampshire Medical Society.
Andrew Loehrer, a surgical oncologist at Dartmouth Health, said the office's leadership led to the elimination of disparities in access to care for advance-stage cancer, research that will soon be published nationally.
"Health equity is not some straw man that affects everybody else; it impacts all by ensuring that every single individual in our state has access to high-quality care," Loehrer said.
Adam Crepeau, assistant commissioner with the Department of Environmental Services, said with all its federal grants, the department must prove it complies with the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
"This would put significant federal funds in jeopardy," Crepeau said, identifying up to $90 million in federal aid at risk.
Heidi Trimarco, a lawyer with the Conservation Law Foundation, was more blunt.
"This will take a wrecking ball to DES," Trimarco said, pointing out the impact is 25% of its entire budget.
Office will stay in budget
Gov. Kelly Ayotte said she hasn't read Belcher's bill and "has not thought about re-creating" the diversity council former Gov. Chris Sununu formed by executive order in 2017. Sununu eliminated the council in December before leaving office.
She told reporters that the two-year state budget proposal she will present on Thursday will include continuing the Office of Health Equity.
"When it comes to diversity, equity, we want everyone to feel they can be engaged; that's a basic premise of who we are," Ayotte said.
The Office of Health Equity was established in 1999 as the Office of Minority Health; its name was changed in 2016. Eliminating it would save $100,000 in state taxpayer funds and forfeit $69,000 in federal grants.
The office runs the Refugee Resettlement Program, which coordinates employment, language skills and cultural assimilation to help those from other countries legally coming here, often to escape oppression.
Health and Human Services Associate Commissioner Ann Landry said Belcher's bill would cause the program to lose state coordination, which ensures refugees get access to all services from food stamp and welfare assistance to job training and English as a second language classes.
Richard Minard of Bow runs Building Community in New Hampshire and his seven-person staff includes former residents of Afghanistan, Ukraine, Haiti and Republic of Congo.
"Together they speak 17 languages," Minard testified. "I don't know when or how 'equity' became a dirty word. To me, the promise of liberty and justice for all Americans is synonymous with the promise of equity and inclusion."
State Rep. Jess Edwards, R-Auburn, chairs the House Finance Committee working group with oversight of the entire Health and Human Services budget. Over six years, Edwards, a fiscal conservative, said he eyed these programs "cynically" and spent more time than any other legislator scrutinizing their work.
"I would say that this is a program that, by and large, most of us can agree to," Edwards said. "We aren't trying to put the thumb on the scale to provide superior access to a select group; it's to provide everyone the same access and to me, that's a goal the state of New Hampshire should strive to meet."
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