Missouri Senate to work on state budget – without proposed ban on state spending of diversity initiatives

An effort to ban state spending on diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives has been stripped out of Missouri’s state budget proposal. 

The Missouri Senate is expected to decide this week if it backs the Senate Appropriations Committee’s move. 

The House included the proposed ban, despite the opposition of Democrats, including St. Louis State Representative Peter Meredith…

“It's really important that that language stay out of there, like incredibly important. As some department heads have said, it is an existential threat to what we do in most of our departments and would be an enormous problem. Is there language they could negotiate down? Not that we'd be okay with,” says Merideth.

State Representative Doug Richey, a Republican from Excelsior Springs, says he will continue to work for a version of the proposed ban to make it into the final budget proposal.