Diversity, equity and inclusion have remained a battleground for compliance — largely for public institutions, especially colleges and universities. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott condemned DEI workplace efforts and voiced that disdain to state agencies and public universities early last year, and higher education institutions announced plans to comply with the state’s top-down orders.

As a DEI consultant underscored to HR Dive at the time, the Supreme Court’s higher education ruling in June 2023 created a “chilling effect” on DEI at work.

Because the ruling was on Title VI, not VII, of the Civil Rights Act, nothing has explicitly changed at federal level, Mandy Price, CEO and co-founder of DEI tech company Kanarys said. “But we’ve seen a lot of litigation being brought against private employers, so I think folks are just fearful,” she told HR Dive.

Beyond compliance, workplace culture is experiencing a shift: Diversity is now a dirty word, seemingly, in corporate social responsibility reports, and some HR experts have told Monster that DEI is the first to go when budget cuts are on the table.‍

Last year, industry experts told HR Dive that DEI wasn’t dead but evolving — with an emphasis on “employee experience,” for example, as a helpful rebrand. This year, in HR Dive’s Identity of HR survey, 16.9% of HR leaders said “racial equity will decrease in importance” over the next three to five years; this is up from 7.6% of respondents last year.

Conversely, 25.5% of HR Dive readers said that racial equity will grow in importance, compared to 38.9% of respondents to last year’s survey.

This raises the question: Are racial equity and other aspects of DEI simply changing names and faces? Or is such programming in veritable trouble?

DEI is evolving, amid political pushback

Due to the changing legal landscape, DEI policies will need to evolve, Price believes.

“We’ve seen organizations start to move away from using the term ‘DEI’ because of the political connotations that have overtaken it,” Price said.

It’s not that her team explicitly advises to remove this language, Price explained. Instead, she recommends that leaders use “concrete” language to skirt mixed-up connotations.

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