The 2024 Kentucky General Assembly has taken aim at a number of civil liberties and civil rights issues, chief among them attempts at gutting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs across the state at both the primary and postsecondary education levels. Legislators are calling these programs and their tenets "divisive concepts." As our Executive Director Amber Duke wrote earlier this session, these programs aren't divisive — but bills like Senate Bill 6, House Bill 9, and Senate Bill 93 are.
Senate Bill 6, in particular, is quickly making its way through the General Assembly. The bill creates a definition for “divisive concepts” in postsecondary educational institutions that will chill speech and eviscerate organizations, activities, and adminstrative mechanisms (like bias incident reporting) that create a sense of safety and help create healthy environments for students from marginalized communities, among many other things.
Read more about Senate Bill 6 in our letter to the House Education Committee below.
