Texas universities, similar to Iowa’s Public Schools, maintain affirmative action plans, likely in noncompliance with state legislation, recent executive orders, and the Department of Education’s (ED) latest Dear Colleague letter.
Passed in late 2023, Texas’s Senate Bill 17 specifically banned “policies or procedures designed or implemented in reference to race, color, or ethnicity.” Affirmative action plans directly contradict this, mandating race-based “strategies” to achieve race-based hiring “goals.” Per the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Compliance Manual, employers must “identify potential underrepresentation of protected groups” and establish “measurable goals to increase representation of underrepresented groups, focusing on achieving balance.”
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission invites all employers to submit affirmative action (AA) plans as part of its guidelines. Most universities, including Texas public universities, submit Plans voluntary to reduce exposure to discrimination lawsuits. Once hiring goals are set, they inform strategic planning, vision statements, hiring manuals, and job postings as the mandate to “increase diversity.”
All university employees are expected to “increase diversity”—in other words, to use race in hiring. As the University of Texas – El Paso notes, “responsibility for implementing the Equal Opportunity Policy and Affirmative Action Plan rests with every member of the University community.”
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Texas Tech University’s hiring manual illustrates several of the tweaks in hiring practices commonly employed by diversicrats: committees must contain “a diversity of backgrounds,” each committee member must undergo “equal opportunity” training, and all searches must pass a “review of search efforts to recruit qualified women, minorities, protected veterans, and individuals with disabilities.”
Texas Tech admits to engaging in “active recruitment of qualified underutilized minorities.” It identifies minorities “by the Office of Federal Contractor Compliance Programs (OFCCP) and as used in connection with the TTU AAP [affirmative action plan]” as “Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Native Hawaiians/Pacific Islanders, Native Americans/Alaskan Natives, and individuals who identify as two or more races.”
Similarly, Sul Ross State University in Alpine, Texas, notes in its hiring procedure that “funds are available through the Human Resources Office for minority recruiting advertising.” Universities disguise race-based recruitment strategies such as this one as “active” or “targeted” recruitment, emphasizing discrimination.
While some Texas universities have removed their AA plans from their websites, many AA plans are still publicly available. Some were even resubmitted or reapproved by Texas institutions in the year since SB17 was passed.
According to SB17, Texas public institutions will undergo a compliance audit once every four years. They would do well to eliminate their affirmative action plans and references to “increasing diversity” in university documents. State auditors, meanwhile, should pay close attention to these mechanisms, which perpetuate odious, race-based hiring practices despite de jure condemnation.
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Image: “Sul Ross State University Alpine Texas” by Adavyd on Wikimedia Commons
If I read this correctly, Texas SB17 contradicts requirements of federal law.
This sounds like a very uncomfortable in which to put the Texas universities.
Furthermore, “affirmative action” per se is not illegal, it has explicitly approved by the Supreme Court.
The problem is twofold — illegal Federal regulations arguably supersede state law, and that is why they need to be challenged.
But the larger issue is that people are not going to enforce regulations that they don’t want to. Who in Texas is going to be enforcing this, and do they honestly want to???