S.B. 1, passed in early 2025 in an attempt to cut out a perceived liberal bias on campus, piled new regulations onto public universities, including a ban on DEI programs, a requirement that universities promote “intellectual diversity,” annual faculty review practices and much more.
“S.B. 1 sets the expectations, H.B. 698 ensures that these expectations are verifiable, enforceable, in an orderly, transparent way,” said Young, who serves as chair of the House Committee on Higher Education and Workforce.
Young’s new bill would make the Ohio Chancellor of Education the primary compliance enforcer of S.B. 1 and the chief arbiter of what happens to $75 million in state public university that was set aside, subject to compliance, in the state’s 2026-2027 budget, and any future pools of set-aside state share of instruction (SSI) funding in perpetuity.
The chancellor, under H.B. 698, would oversee compliance for eight measures in S.B. 1. Those measures dictate how syllabi are posted, set bans on DEI programs, require American civic literacy courses, require a written faculty review system, require post-tenure review policies, and instate a ban on accepting gifts from China.
H.B. 698 would require public universities to prove compliance in each of these fields annually.
According to the legislature’s nonpartisan analysis of the bill, any institution that fails to comply with the bill’s certification requirements would have set-aside SSI funds withheld for that fiscal year. “Any SSI funds that are withheld may not be released, regardless of subsequent compliance with the bill’s requirements,” the analysis reads.
DEI measures
Regarding DEI, H.B. 698 would do the following:
First, it would prohibit public universities from “disguising” any positions on their payroll in order to “continue DEI functions prohibited by S.B. 1.”
Next, it would require public universities to create a registry of all employees who “performed DEI functions” on Jan. 1, 2025 and of all employees who were reassigned to different roles before Sept. 25 of that same year.
The register must include details like the employee’s name and title, their prior duties that related to DEI, the details of their assignment, their salary changes between positions, an explanation of their new duties, and an attestation of accuracy by the university’s chief human resources officer and legal counsel.
And, for each employee in that registry, universities must prepare a report that contains a narrative of the employee’s reassignment, “proof” that the employee was re-assignged to a substantially different position than before, comparisons between the two jobs, an attestation of accuracy from the university’s legal counsel, a compensation breakdown, a compliance plan for ongoing review, and a certification by the university president and leader of the board of trustees.
The bill would let the chancellor make the final call on compliance.
Young told this outlet that the registry component of the bill is critical. “The challenge was that if you had faculty in those positions, right, and they’re still there (on the payroll), where are they and what are they doing? That’s a fair question,” Young said.
Jennifer Price, the executive director of the Ohio Conference of the American Association of University Professors, told this outlet that complying with this section of the bill would be a “tremendous administrative burden” and raised concerns about the registry primarily impacting people of color.
“When lawmakers targeted programs that have historically employed minorities, as they did with SB 1, it raised serious concerns about equity and fairness. HB 698 requires the singling out specific categories of employees for special scrutiny and basically puts them on a watch list which raises serious constitutional questions,” Price said in a statement outlining the OCAAUP’s opposition to the bill.
S.B. 1 does not explicitly define what a DEI “position” is, leaving it up to the interpretation of public university leaders themselves.
Locally, the provision has led to the closure of Wright State University’s Division of Inclusive Excellence and five cultural and identity centers: the Asian and Native American Center, the Bolinga Black Cultural Resources Center, the Latino Center, the LGBTQA Center, and the Women’s Center. And, at Miami University, it’s led to the closure of its Office of Transformational and Inclusive Excellence, Center for Student Diversity and Inclusion, and Miami Regional Center for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
H.B. 698 awaits public testimony in the House Committee on Higher Education and Workforce.
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Avery Kreemer can be reached at 614-981-1422, on X, via email, or you can drop him a comment/tip with the survey below.
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