Deploying Catholic Social Teaching to Defend DEI Initiatives As Protected Religious Expression

The "Dear Colleague Letter" published by the Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights sent educational institutions scrambling to remove forward-facing language about diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives and restructure race-specific programming. Understandably, these institutions--public and private alike--are concerned to protect their students, who depend on the Department for federal financial aid. However, I argue that Catholic institutions should defend their commitment to DEI as grounded in Catholic Social Teaching and as thereby protected by the First Amendment's Free Exercise Clause. I offer a reading of the USCCB's 2018 document "Open Wide Our Hearts: A Pastoral Letter Against Racism" which denounces racism as a structural evil that violates the imago dei, and calls on all Catholic educational institutions to actively combat racism. Conservative Catholics have partnered with Republicans for years in successfully claiming religious exemptions from federal laws. This approach could also be useful to defend DEI.