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The Republican-controlled Alabama Legislature passed a bill Tuesday that would, within public higher education institutions, limit so-called “divisive concepts” plus diversity, equity and inclusion programs and transgender individuals’ access to campus bathrooms.
In a particular concern for free speech advocates, Senate Bill 129 could stop faculty members from teaching about what the bill dubs “divisive concepts”—such as the idea that meritocracy is racist—even in a critical way. Jeremy Young, the Freedom to Learn program director at PEN America, has said it would be “the most restrictive educational gag order in the country” affecting higher education.
The state Legislature’s website hadn’t posted the final vote tally Tuesday night, but AL.com reported that the state Senate voted 25 to 4 to approve amendments the state House of Representatives made to the bill about two weeks ago. It now goes to Governor Kay Ivey, a Republican, for her signature or veto.
Senate Republicans had earlier passed the bill on a 26-to-7 party-line vote, just two days after it was introduced. Their version included a paragraph saying nothing in the bill could “be construed to inhibit or violate the First Amendment rights of any student or employee, or to undermine the duty of a public institution of higher education to protect, to the greatest degree, academic freedom, intellectual diversity and free expression, provided that none of these protected tenets conflict with this act.”
The House amendments stripped the words “provided that none of these protected tenets conflict with this act.” But Young said Tuesday that he doesn’t “think the amendments change anything,” and the key change needed would’ve been removing the bill’s reference to its effect on “coursework.”
