Show-Me State Times

U.S. Senator Eric Schmitt (R-MO), who chairs the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, led a hearing focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs. The session examined whether these initiatives align with existing civil rights laws.

During his opening remarks, Senator Schmitt stated: “Today’s hearing is about reaffirming a simple but radical truth: That all Americans are entitled to the equal protection of our laws — and that no Americans should be treated as second-class citizens in their own country. The Trump administration has done extraordinary work in beginning the long, difficult task of restoring this principle in the conduct of our government. This hearing is about ensuring that we do everything in our power to finish the job.”

Schmitt addressed recent developments following Supreme Court decisions regarding race-based admissions policies. He said: “Even now, after the Supreme Court ruled that race-based admissions are illegal in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, the universities continue to flout the law — rebranding their quotas, cloaking them in essay prompts and hiring policies, but keeping the racial spoils system intact.”

He also discussed DEI efforts within corporate America: “In the corporate world, DEI has had the same effect. It has meant hiring and promotion not on the basis of competence, but on the basis of race and sex — a world where one’s place in the new caste system determines who rises and who falls. It has meant ‘diversity fellowships’ for which white men need not apply. The effect of these policies has been even more extreme than many might guess: In ‘the year after the Black Lives Matter protests,’ Bloomberg reported, ‘the S&P 100 added more than 300,000 jobs — 94 percent went to people of color.”

Senator Schmitt described his interpretation of civil rights law as it relates to DEI practices: “Let me be very clear: The only just and legitimate interpretation of our civil rights laws is what their text plainly demands — equal treatment under the law. That means an end to racial preferences. An end to double standards. An end to legal fictions like ‘disparate impact,’ which treats differences in group outcomes as evidence of group discrimination — a totalitarian logic that demands a total leveling of society to fully achieve its ends. Ensuring perfectly equal outcomes between groups — across race, sex and every other protected characteristic — would require a level of social engineering that would make Stalinist Russia look like a libertarian paradise; and even then, it would likely fail. Rather than using civil rights laws to defend a racial caste system, we should be using them — based on the plain and unambiguous meaning of their text — to dismantle that system and restore equal treatment under the law.”

He further commented on how DEI initiatives have become part of various levels of government policy: “In many blue states, DEI is now entrenched in every level of government decision-making. At the federal level, it has produced a vast universe of civil service preferences, taxpayer-funded minority-only grants, and open racial discrimination in contracting. Under the Biden Administration, farmers in the Midwest were told they couldn’t get debt relief, restaurants were deemed ineligible for small business grants, and small business owners were barred from lucrative federal contracts, all for the crime of being too male or too white. Much of this took place in the wake of COVID, where years of rolling lockdowns decimated many small businesses and drove countless others to the brink. In the face of all that, the Biden administration redistributed billions of dollars from taxpayers to members of what they deemed to be ‘socially disadvantaged’ groups — while leaving the rest of America out in the cold.”

During questioning at this hearing (Senate Judiciary Committee), Senator Schmitt spoke with Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon about actions taken during former President Trump’s administration regarding DEI programs.

He also questioned Gene Hamilton from America First Legal concerning efforts against discriminatory practices.