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WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, America First Legal (AFL) President Gene Hamilton will testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Constitution and Limited Government in a hearing on “Ending Illegal DEI Discrimination & Preferences: Enforcing Our Civil Rights Laws.”
In his testimony, Mr. Hamilton will expose how corporations, universities, school systems, and government entities have embraced unlawful race- and sex-based discrimination under the guise of “diversity, equity, and inclusion.”
Watch the hearing live here, with the second panel of the hearing beginning around 3:55 p.m. ET.
Read the full written testimony here.
Key excerpts from remarks as prepared for delivery:
Chairman Schmitt, Ranking Member Welch, and distinguished members of the Subcommittee on the Constitution—thank you for allowing me to testify today about this critical issue.
As President of America First Legal, a nonprofit organization committed to upholding the rule of law, advancing meritocracy, and protecting the civil rights of all Americans, I appreciate the opportunity to discuss our ongoing efforts to combat discrimination against American citizens.
There is nothing righteous or even morally defensible about intentionally discriminating against American citizens based on their race or sex. What matters is whether a person is the best candidate for the job based on merit. Yet corporations, universities, K-12 schools, and other institutions that should know better have embraced intentional discrimination as though it were unquestionably their duty to do so. This was particularly true over the last four years of the Biden Administration.
Let me be clear: it is never acceptable to hire, fire, promote, or take any employment action based on skin color or sex. “Balancing” a workforce, for example, through race or sex-based preferences, is never okay—every reserved slot for one group necessarily excludes others. Attempting to address purported disparities through the use of such blunt instruments ignores intervening political, social, and economic forces—like mass immigration and the erosion of the nuclear family—and it undermines the human dignity of every person subjected to such policies. Holding down one American under the purported premise of lifting another up is an abhorrent aggrandizement of bureaucratic power that threatens individual liberty and freedom at levels that would only be admired by committed socialists.
No great nation can sustain the harm inflicted by such divisive policies. They undermine and weaken our great institutions, dilute our shared American identity, turn Americans against one another, and jeopardize the strength of the greatest country on earth. We are united by fairness, individual achievement, and equal opportunity—principles that have made us a beacon of freedom and prosperity. But when government bureaucrats are empowered to pick winners and losers based on immutable characteristics—or when they encourage, conspire with, or acquiesce to private sector actors doing the same—fractures form in the foundation of our great nation. These fractures, which we see already, will continue to grow and ultimately destroy our constitutional republic if left unaddressed.
Since our founding in 2021, AFL has been at the forefront of many critical public policy battles. Our work is driven by a fundamental principle: every American deserves equal treatment under the law, free from discrimination based on race, sex, or other immutable characteristics. To advance our mission, AFL has filed dozens of lawsuits for clients, filed dozens of federal civil rights complaints, and conducted oversight investigations to challenge unlawful “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) practices. We have spearheaded direct educational efforts to inform the American people about the dangers and illegality of DEI policies. And we have made it an organizational goal to dismantle and destroy DEI.
Many of our actions in this area target violations by government and private actors of key federal statutes, including Titles VI and VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, 42 U.S.C. § 1981 (which prohibits racial discrimination in private contracting), the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, and numerous similar state and local laws.
AFL’s fight for equality and against pernicious ideology began in the public sector. To this day, one of our core missions continues to be investigating, exposing, and litigating against programs that use taxpayer funds to discriminate against American citizens.
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