The State of Alabama is trying to dismiss the federal lawsuit challenging Alabama's 2024 law banning taxpayer-funded Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) offices and training after University of Alabama staff and students filed suit.
The new law was enacted on Oct. 1, 2024. State Sen. Will Barfoot (R-Pike Road) sponsored the bill, which sailed through the Alabama Legislature last year despite condemnation from Democratic lawmakers and liberal advocates.
The law prohibits agencies, local boards of education, and public colleges and universities from maintaining a DEI office or department or sponsoring any DEI program or program that advocates for a divisive concept.
While the law was intended to eliminate DEI departments, it resulted in more of a rebranding in most cases. The University of Alabama at Birmingham's DEI office was transformed into the Office of Access and Engagement, which opened with a "new charge and function to broadly serve and promote the success of all UAB students, faculty and staff." The office is led by the vice president of Access and Engagement, Paulette Dilworth, the school's vice president of DEI since 2015.
The Alabama State Conference of the NAACP of Alabama and a handful of students and professors from the University of Alabama and UAB filed a suit in January to block the law from applying.
Governor Kay Ivey and UA's board of trustees were named as defendants in the suit.
The suit claims the law violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution and is so "vague and ambiguous that educators and students cannot reasonably discern what is prohibited by the statute's terms."
In a recent motion to dismiss, Attorney General Steve Marshall's office argued that the UA professors who joined the suit had standing to challenge the law since they did not specify what part of their jobs they could not do now. Marshall's office made similar claims about the students who joined the suit. The motion alleges that the only complaint from the professors was that the law had a "chilling effect" on their duties since they were fearful of potentially violating the law.
"Of course, it may be that the Professor Plaintiffs are really engaging in conduct that jumps from teaching 'about' certain concepts to requiring their students to agree with those concepts," the motion reads. "If so, they should say so and identify which divisive concepts they require their students to endorse. But because the Professor Plaintiffs disclaim such actions in their Complaint, they have not established standing to challenge most of the Act's provisions under the First Amendment."
It continues, "At the motion-to-dismiss stage, plaintiffs are generally entitled to their own facts but not their own law. The result of applying that rule here is dismissal of all claims against Governor Ivey in her official capacity as Governor of Alabama. Even assuming the truth of the factual allegations in their Complaint, Plaintiffs lack standing to sue Governor Ivey and have failed to state a claim upon which relief can be granted."
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