(The Center Square) - Arizonans will have a chance to put a stop to their taxpayer money being spent on diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
On Nov. 3, Arizona residents will vote on Proposition 142, which would stop state money from funding DEI-related offices and programs.
The proposition would prevent taxpayers from being forced to support race-based policies as a condition for college admission or graduation, hiring or contracting.
Also, Proposition 142 would prohibit public institutions from requiring employees to undergo mandatory DEI training, make statements supporting DEI or talk about race relations.
Matt Beienburg, the director of education policy at the Phoenix-based Goldwater Institute, called the proposition “straightforward.”
He said the proposition says it won’t “discriminate against individuals on the basis of race and won’t force or coerce people into endorsing or participating in programs that push for race-based discrimination.”
The proposition builds upon Arizona’s past efforts to remove “state-sponsored race-based discrimination,” he explained.
In 2010, Arizonans passed Proposition 107, which prevented affirmative action from being considered in public employment or public education. Nearly 60% of Arizonans voted for the proposition.
Beienburg said Proposition 107 left a “carve-out” that permitted “race-based discrimination if the federal government is pushing for it.” Proposition 142 would eliminate the loophole to ensure Arizonans “can’t be discriminated against based upon their skin color in any kind of hiring or admission,” he noted.
Regardless of which party controls the federal government, Beienburg told The Center Square it has “no business coercing or pushing Arizona to employ discriminatory practices.”
“Arizona shouldn’t be dependent upon who’s in Washington, D.C. to be able to guarantee [its] citizens have equal protection under the law,” he explained.
But Katelynn Contreras, a policy strategist at the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona, said Proposition 142 “violates the First Amendment because it attacks academic freedom and seeks to dismantle decades of progress that have created a more just and equitable society for all Arizonans.”
Contreras told The Center Square that Proposition 142's language would prevent certain viewpoints “from being discussed in college classrooms and government workplaces.”
She gave the example of a college professor teaching about the history of slavery in the South. She noted the professor would be restricted from teaching about the topic under the proposition.
Beienburg countered that the proposition does not prevent teachers from teaching anything. In fact, Proposition 142 is a pro-First Amendment measure because it doesn’t restrict anyone’s private speech, he said.
Rather, Beienburg said, the measure says students can’t be forced to take DEI courses as a graduation requirement.
The proposition allows students to take a class on any topic as an elective, including slavery, the Holocaust and the Japanese internment camps, he noted.
Beienburg said the proposition safeguards students’ academic freedom by allowing them to earn degrees without having to “waste time and tuition dollars on activist coursework that has nothing to do with [their] degree.”
Solveig Muus, the director of Lutheran Advocacy Ministry Arizona, said her organization opposes Proposition 142 “because its language sounds like simple fairness, but its effect is much broader.”
LAMA is nonpartisan and follows the teachings of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
She said it would “limit how public schools, universities and government agencies address race, gender, ethnicity and sexual orientation in certain programs and policies.”
The proposition “can create confusion and fear about what schools are allowed to do,” Muus told The Center Square.
LAMA’s Lutheran social teaching “calls us to confront racism, protect the dignity of every person and pay attention to people who have been excluded from power,” according to Muus.
She said LAMA believes the proposition “moves Arizona in the wrong direction.”
“Equal treatment does not always produce fairness when people face different barriers. If a student, worker or community has been excluded, public institutions need tools to understand and respond to that reality,” Muus said.
When “some voters hear DEI, they think politics or ideology, but for LAMA, the question is practical. Can schools, universities and public agencies really recognize barriers and work to overcome them?” Muus questioned.
According to Contreras, Arizona already has laws preventing discrimination against things such as race, sex and ethnicity.
She said these “DEI bans are a way to feed into this heightened political rhetoric in order for lawmakers to score brownie points and distract from real issues Arizonans are facing.”
