Alabama lawmakers passed an anti-diversity, equity and inclusion bill

Alabama’s Senate Appropriations Passed with Two Laws Deciding Absentee Voting Acts, and a Senate Resolution Eliminating the Payed Help Problem

Alabama’s Legislature gave final approval to a bill that would ban paid help with Absentee Ballot applications and another bill that would restrict diversity, equity and inclusion programs at universities.

Republicans had named the bills as priorities for the legislative session. The Senate voted along party lines to accept the changes made by the House. The two bills now go to Gov. Kay Ivey for her signature.

The absentee voting bill would make it a misdemeanor to distribute a pre-filled absentee ballot application to a voter or return another voter’s completed application. It would become a felony to give, or receive, a payment or gift “for distributing, ordering, requesting, collecting, completing, prefilling, obtaining, or delivering a voter’s absentee ballot application.”

Republicans said it is needed to combat voter fraud through “ballot harvesting,” a term for the collection of multiple absentee ballots. Democrats argued that there is no proof that ballot harvesting exists and called it an attempt to suppress voting by absentee ballot.

“Any person can still get anyone’s help with applications, but no part of that application can be pre-filled. That’s all,” Republican Sen. Garlan Gudger, the bill’s sponsor, said. “There’s a lot of pressure when some people say, ‘I want you to vote this way,’ and give them an application. You can’t do that. You have to have it blank,” Gudger said.

“It’s just another voter suppression. It’s just a means of suppressing certain people from having the ability and right to access to the free flowing of the vote,” Senate Minority Leader Bobby Singleton said.

“Thecruel legislation aims tocriminalize the charitable acts of good Samaritans across the state of Alabama, whether from neighbors, church members, nursing home staffers, or prison chaplains, according toJerome Dees, Alabama policy director for the Southern Poverty Law Center Action Fund.”

Protests against an Anti-DEI Measure in the House of Representatives to the U.S. Senate from Oct. 1 to Dec. 1

Since 2023, 80 anti-DEI bills have been introduced in 28 states and Congress, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education. Measures have been enacted in eight states.

Republicans said they are trying to guard against programs that “deepen divisions,” but Black Democrats called it an effort to roll back affirmative action programs that welcome and encourage diversity.

“The purpose of this bill is to prevent compelled speech and indoctrination,” Republican Sen. Will Barfoot said when he introduced the legislation, according to WBHM.

The legislation says colleges and universities “shall ensure that every multiple occupancy restroom be designated for use by individuals based” on the sex that a person was assigned at birth. The requirement is not known how it would be enforced.

Ivey signed the bill one day after the state House and Senate gave final approval to the measure, SB 129. It will take effect on Oct. 1. WBHM reported that college students organized protests against the bill, including a large rally at the State House.

Critics of such bills say they’re motivated more by politics than by educational aspirations; they also say efforts to ban DEI are more likely to undermine, rather than protect, free speech protections.

There are issues of race in the U.S. and Alabama, but the bill does not mention them. The way schools teach about race has become a political hot topic in recent years, as opponents attacked critical race theory.

The bill also rejects the idea that any “individual is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or subconsciously” — a position that runs counter to what social scientists have concluded in recent decades.

Other divisive concepts, the legislation states, include the idea that people in one demographic group “are inherently responsible for actions committed in the past by other members” of that group.

Some of the language in the long section of the bill is geared toward preventing it from being overturned in a court of law.

This is a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. It was clearly vague. Clearly unconstitutional,” he said, according to WBHM. He said he was putting a restraint on his thoughts of speech because of a violation of the First Amendment.

Measures to enhance the self-accreditation and demographic information of higher education institutions: a part of the bill “Aug 11th Legislature of India”

The bill gave some wiggle room to the colleges in order to fulfill accreditation standards and collection of demographic information.