Texas AG Paxton issues antiDEI opinion on MLK Day
Jan 19, 2026
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton issued legal guidance on Monday morning, declaring many diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in public and private spaces unconstitutional. For several years, Republican state lawmakers have pushed to phase out diversity programs in state government. Now, the p
rivate sphere may be next.
On Monday, people attending the Martin Luther King Jr. Parade celebrated gains made after the Civil Rights Movement, such as affirmative action and diversity recruitment and hiring efforts.
“You have people who don’t know the whole background story to that. So why take it away? That’s something we need,” said Gregory Harrington in an interview at the parade.
“It helped with education. It educated our people more,” said Jeanine Robinson.
Also on Monday morning, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton laid out a 74-page memo arguing that those very programs were unconstitutional and constituted race-based discrimination. It supported Governor Greg Abbott’s earlier efforts to end the practice of boosting contracts to Black, Hispanic, and women-owned businesses through the Historically Underutilized Business Program.
“There is a prohibition in the Constitution to discriminate on the basis of race or sex. And that doesn’t mean that if you’re Black or Hispanic or a woman or a man or white or whatever, you’re going to be denied access,” said Gov. Abbott in an earlier interview with NBC DFW.
But Paxton also went further, stating that race-based hiring, promotion, mentoring, and training programs may also violate state and federal law.
He wrote: “The race- and sex-based public sector preferences discussed in this opinion cannot survive strict scrutiny and are therefore unconstitutional. Furthermore, a large body of DEI practices in the private sector triggers liability…”
“The opinion also poses a real threat to the corporate community by inviting lawsuits and unwarranted hostility toward institutions that have attempted, however imperfectly, to broaden opportunity in workplaces that still do not reflect full equality for Black and Brown Americans,” wrote Gary Bledsoe, President of the Texas NAACP, responding to the AG memo.
“We’ve never lived in a colorblind society, and you can’t ignore color,” said Texas Rep. Venton Jones, D – Dallas.
Monday afternoon, Jones told NBC DFW he sees this as a signal that Attorney General Paxton may soon launch lawsuits against private companies.
“And this isn’t the first signal. This is a string of examples since I have been elected, indicating that there is a ramping up of policies that are becoming more and more discriminatory,” said Jones.
Arthur Fleming, the former president of the NAACP in Dallas, said some of the diversity programs, both public and private, were intended to help white women along with black and Hispanic Texans. He argues that this action will encourage people to only rely on their own race for support and business.
“The fact that we had diversity benefited everybody, the city, everybody. So going against that, it’s going to hurt a lot of people,” said Fleming.
Texans will find out the full scope of this legal guidance in the weeks and months ahead.
There was also a political element to the opinion on Monday. Paxton is in a competitive race with Senator John Cornyn in the Republican primary. Cornyn used to be the Texas Attorney General.
Online Paxton wrote his opinion overruled “a flawed opinion from then-AG Cornyn that allowed DEI to flourish.”
In response, Sen. Cornyn wrote: “You’d think a competent Attorney General would know that what I issued more than 25 years ago was a retraction of incomplete guidance due to litigation, not an “opinion.” There’s nothing for him to overturn because nothing was issued, so this is yet another waste of time and taxpayer dollars by the TX AG, showboating for attention.”
...read more
read less
Dcssc
Reply (0)
0
0
1 h
...
