1. United States
2. Ill.
3. Letter

Hello. I am concerned about the numerous corporations that have announced in recent months that they would be scaling back or even potentially completely eliminating their DEI programs. DEI as you know stands for diversity, equity, and inclusion. DEI is important because it’s not enough to simply not discriminate against groups of people that were historically discriminated against and still do face systemic barriers such as for example, women and people of color and disabled people and LGBTQ people and people who are part of one or more or even all of these groups. We need to take proactive measures to ensure that workplace are diverse, and not only diverse, but also equitable and inclusive. However, many people seem to disagree with DEI saying that it is simply a form of discrimination against privileged groups of people. However, these people either don’t understand or don’t wanna understand that “positive discrimination “is necessary because of the fact that due to long scale, systemic inequality people are not starting at the same place. Or the same starting line. There’s not a level playing field so that makes it harder for people to get ahead even when discriminatory laws were repealed or laws that explicitly forbade discrimination were enacted DEI and affirmative action are important things that we have to do in order to truly create a goal where everybody has the same ability to succeed in life. Lots of corporations are pulling back on DEI. And that tells us that we simply cannot trust corporations to commit to long-term. Employment discrimination is a major issue even in 2025. And we have every reason to fear that it’s going to get worse. We can’t trust corporations to take care of us. We can’t trust corporations to regulate themselves. That’s what governments are for. So I’m asking you to consider this. Will you consider supporting laws that would explicitly require companies to have good DEI policies because the anti-discrimination loss that we have on the books simply are not enough. It’s not enough to simply not discriminate. We need to actively make the effort to include people. Anti-discrimination laws are only the first step. DEI policies are what we need going forward. So I’m asking you if you would put into place loss they require any company operating in the state of Illinois to have DEI policies in place.