HELENA, Mont. (AP) — A Republican lawmaker in Montana wants to prohibit mandatory diversity training for state employees with a bill whose language matches a Florida law that is temporarily blocked by the courts.
The proposed “Montana Individual Freedom Act,” would prohibit diversity, equity and inclusion training as a condition of state employment if the training is aimed at having the employee believe that a group of people are responsible for “and must feel guilt, anguish, or other forms of psychological distress,” for historical injustices.
A House committee heard testimony Monday after the Senate passed the bill on party lines.
“I find it interesting and confusing that we’re trying to legislate emotional responses,” the executive director of the Montana Human Rights Network, Angelina Gonzalez-Aller, said Monday when she testified in opposition to the bill before a House committee.
“I have no doubts that this is little more than a censorship attempt rooted in a coordinated national effort to roll back progress on racial and social justice,” Gonzalez-Aller had said last month when the bill was heard by a Senate committee.
The sponsor, state Sen. Jeremy Trebas, said that nationally, diversity training is getting too political. He did not suggest that what he considered politically slanted training was taking place in Montana, but that his bill seeks to preempt it.
“I think we need to work on definitions, then talk about what’s appropriate to train and to whom we should be training on these topics,” Trebas said.
The House committee has not yet voted on it.
“This bill is a gross mischaracterization of what is conventionally called DEI, or diversity equity and inclusion workshops,” said Chris Young-Greer with the Montana Racial Equity Project.
“We focus on lifting up what all of us bring to the table with regard to our very different and important…
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