Braun report identifies 350 examples of DEI in Indiana state government

Grants to reduce racial health inequities.

Scholarships for Black and Hispanic students.

Racial bias training.

A camping initiative for Black Hoosiers.

All are programs that have been abolished and even erased from their respective agency websites following an executive order by Gov. Mike Braun. The directive forced agencies to replace “diversity, equity and inclusion,” or DEI, throughout state government policies and programming with “merit, excellence and innovation.”

The January executive order gave agencies until July 1 to complete a review and identify DEI in their policies, which Braun released late Wednesday afternoon. In total, 350 DEI initiatives were identified and detailed across more than 3,800 pages of information.

Specifically, an executive summary highlighted an effort by the Indiana Department of Child Services to recruit and retain case managers “geared toward diversity and inclusion initiatives.” The report said this “created a favoritism … which could have the state missing out on valuable talent.”

Braun said “diversity and equality are hallmarks of what we believe as a country, but these top-down DEI mandates led to division and inefficiency by forcing decisions to flow through this office whose purpose was to achieve a political goal, rather than focused solely on maximizing results for Hoosiers on the kitchen table issues that affect their lives.”

But not all state leaders agree. Rep. Cherrish Pryor, (D-Indianapolis) a member of the Indiana Black Legislative Caucus, noted that many agencies had nothing to report, including the Department of Veteran Affairs as well as the Alcohol and Tobacco Commission. 

“There are a lot of agencies that didn’t even touch diversity, equity and inclusion at all. And the ones that did are the ones in which we see most disparities,” said Pryor.

When it comes to homeownership, health and other measures, Black Hoosiers often start out behind white Hoosiers, Pryor noted, meaning there isn’t a level playing field for everyone. Historic redlining and racism still impact Black Hoosiers when it comes to buying or selling a home while Black mothers die at higher rates than white mothers.

“It almost feels like it’s just an attack,” Pryor said.

Additionally, the deletion of previously public documents raises access concerns — and held an even deeper message to Pryor.

“It’s as if you’re saying the minority community were never here. You never existed. And that is an extremely dangerous policy that they’re implementing. And it should not go unchecked,” she warned.

Health and human services

To comply with Braun’s executive order, the Family and Social Services Administration will be abolishing the Office of Healthy Opportunities, which former Gov. Eric Holcomb created to “work with communities served by the Administration to address factors influencing health outcomes, such as housing, education, transportation, and access to services.” 

Of the four-person team, which had two vacant positions as of January, just one will be kept: the director overseeing compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act because of a federal requirement. 

The state agency will also be changing its mission and vision statements for various departments to eliminate the word “equity.” The previous mission statement for 211, for example, was: “To improve quality of life for Hoosiers by promoting equity and connecting people to health and human service resources through highly skilled navigators, continuous community collaboration and a robust community database, and technological innovations.”

The new mission statement for 211 will simply strike “promoting equity.” 

One of the agency’s previous values — inclusion, or the belief that “Diverse cultures, perspectives and ideas are the basis for agency growth” — will also be eliminated.

Contracts that included DEI requirements, including those specifying “equitable access” to services for older or disabled Hoosiers, will be amended to remove that language and 11 grants will be reworded. 

The Department of Child Services also eliminated an empty Strategic Equity position in September 2024 that was tasked with assessing barriers to the agency’s programs or services. Additionally, several reports offering advice to families navigating transracial adoption have disappeared and mission statements have been revised. 

IDOH will eliminate two positions outright: a disparities coordinator and a maternal health coordinator. Indiana has one of the worst maternal mortality rates in the world — and Black mothers are more likely to die in the year following childbirth than their white counterparts. 

“I’m just disgusted. These were really no-brainers,” Pryor said about maternal health initiatives geared toward Black Hoosiers and eliminated positions seeking to eliminate health disparities.

“It is going to harm and hurt women,” Pryor continued. “… as the numbers get worse, that is going to lie at the feet of the governor and his policies.”

Maternal and infant mortality rates were a specific focus for the Holcomb administration — and rates appeared to fall, especially for infants. 

“If the numbers get worse for Black women, it’s going to get worse overall,” Pryor said about maternal mortality rates. “For this particular issue, you know, investing in maternal health for women, investing in the minority community, it also helps the majority community as well.”

Notably, the Office of Minority Health itself cannot be eliminated by executive order, because lawmakers put it into statute. But Pryor wondered whether that department could become a target in the upcoming legislative session.

A core tenet of officials in the health space has been the concept of health equity, which a 2017 Robert Johnson Wood Foundation report defines as “mean(ing) that everyone has a fair and just opportunity to be as healthy as possible.”

Incorporating the concept can “help bridge divides and foster productive dialogue … Conversely, a lack of clarity can lead to detours, and pose a barrier to effort engagement and action,” the health-focused organization warns.

The word equity was removed across several programs and IDOH grants, including those for fetal-infant mortality review and water safety. Additionally, the agency identified several grants to revise, including one that sought to set aside funds for LGBTQ+ sexual assault prevention services and support. It’s unclear what the revision may be, as the grant contract is one of dozens included in the 705-page DEI report focused on health programming. 

DEI in education

Indiana’s public education offices — including the Indiana Department of Education and Indiana Commission for Higher Education — have eliminated dozens of DEI training programs, and removed race- or identity-based references from several grants and programs, according to a 444-page education addendum released alongside the statewide report.

The education department reported that none of its employee training programs focused on DEI and that it does not include race- or gender-related criteria in job applications. Still, IDOE purged a slew of outdated or non-compliant language across its website, with dozens of pages and documents flagged or removed.

The report also listed numerous changes to statewide education-related programs and materials, including a “high ability” teaching toolkit which was rewritten to remove references to equity and underrepresented groups. 

Videos in the department’s online learning lab that previously addressed inclusive classroom strategies and equity-focused science standards were additionally taken down, with others flagged for removal. A review of statewide academic standards further identified DEI language in subjects like social studies, ethnic studies and workplace readiness. State education officials said in the report that those standards are now undergoing revision.

The department has also contacted multiple professional organizations and state-contracted vendors to request they scrub DEI content from materials shared with Indiana educators.

Significant changes affected dozens of K-12 and higher education grant programs, too.

At least one initiative funded by the state’s Career Coaching Grant initiative was specifically tailored to support minority and low-income students. The program — administered by the higher education commission to fund career exploration activities in schools across the state — launched in March 2024 and grants will “naturally conclude” at the end of 2025, according to the governor’s report.

Two additional grant programs will also sunset at the end of 2025 after receiving no new funding in the current budget. The College Success Program, created in the 2023 budget to support minority and first-generation college students, issued grants to Indiana State, Purdue Northwest, and Valparaiso University — all of which included language supporting students of color or underrepresented backgrounds. 

Indiana State and Valparaiso have since redirected their funds to broader scholarship efforts, but Purdue Northwest had continued targeted programming as of April 2025. 

State parks, startups and more

The changes sprawl beyond health and education — to the agencies that promote Indiana’s public lands, foster its businesses, regulate its housing industry and more.

Braun’s directive, for instance, prompted the Department of Natural Resources to purge campfire-emblazoned flags and other merchandise from state facilities, strip stickers from state-owned vehicles and scrub trainings from its human resources platform. 

That’s because the campfire, dubbed a “unity blaze,” is the logo for North Carolina-based Black Folks Camp Too. Founder Earl B. Hunter Jr. launched the company to combat “generational fears” — like of lynchings — that Black people may hold of the outdoors, ABC 11 reported. 

Black Folks Camp Too offers training on “how to create a more inclusive outdoor experience for all,” according to a joint news release with DNR. 

The duo entered into a yearlong agreement in 2023 for $17,500 and renewed it in 2024 for $62,666, but under Braun’s executive order, DNR backed out two months early. The agency paid a final bill of $56,698, per the report.

The Indiana Economic Development Corporation, which spends millions annually to draw business into the Hoosier State and boost homegrown companies, also revised its efforts.

One of 32 Community Collaboration Fund grants awarded in 2024 — designed for Hispanic women in the cleaning industry — was labeled inappropriate.

“During a call with the awardee, the (executive order) was shared along with guidance for compliance,” the report reads. “The final cohort of the program was opened to all (socially & economically disadvantaged individual) entrepreneurs in compliance with the (executive order). Projects chosen for inclusion for the 2025 program will strictly comply.”

The report specifically targeted economic development affiliate Elevate Ventures and its ElevateME program supporting non-white and female startup founders. The entity is separately facing allegations of financial impropriety and is under investigation. 

“The IEDC has communicated with Elevate regarding the use of state funds in conformance with” Braun’s directive, the report reads.

Tweaks are also coming to the massive Regional Economic Acceleration and Development Initiative, which represents a collective $1 billion in state funding across two tranches. 

The report acknowledges that no statutory or programmatic requirements “explicitly” encourage DEI investments, but that IEDC’s key performance indicators — like increasing the state’s per-capita income and targeting federally defined disadvantaged communities — “could indirectly implicate” them. IEDC is planning changes to 12 READI-funded projects.

Other revisions could impact Indiana’s housing industry gatekeepers.

The Indiana Real Estate Commission was one of several entities overseen by the Public Licensing Agency that admitted to approving DEI-related continuing education courses. But it’s the only one that requires such training for licensure, according to the report.

The training includes an hour of instruction on listing agreements, an hour on fair housing laws and cultural diversity, and five hours on negotiating and counseling skills.

The agency will have the commission redraw its rules to “remove these specific requirements … to the extent that they can do so without violating the federal Fair Housing Act,” the report concludes.

In a statement, Fair Housing Center of Central Indiana Executive Director Amy Nelson noted that the 1968 law “protects all of us, in multiple ways, from discrimination that may occur in our housing transactions.” She said it’s “critical” that it “be part of any training curriculum for those in the housing industry and that outreach continues to inform housing consumers of their rights.”

Pryor said she found the changes disturbing. She has focused on barriers to homeownership for Black Hoosiers for years.

“When you look back and you consider the redlining that happened (due to) the federal government years ago (and) when you look at the gentrification that is happening right now, the last thing we need to do is pare back on anything,” Pryor said. 

Redlining is the historical practice of zoning Black and other minority homeowners into specific areas and not allowing them to purchase homes elsewhere — areas that were also targeted for redevelopment projects such as freeways, destroying years of built-up wealth.

Deleting the public record?

Multiple state agencies reported removed or archived publicly accessible documents related to DEI, citing compliance with the executive order. But doing so raises concerns about accessibility to public records. 

Kris Cundiff, Indiana attorney for the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said “it’s usually concerning when the government — at any level — makes it more difficult for Hoosiers to access public records and information.”

But he noted that “regardless of who is in office, public records in Indiana are presumptively disclosable — by statute — upon request and subject to retention. This is true even if the government makes a policy change or removes public records from a website.”

For example, DCS removed several publications, including: “Parenting in Racially and Culturally Diverse Adoptive Families,” “Preparing Families for Racially and Culturally Diverse Adoptions,” and “We are all immigrants — learning about ourselves and our neighbors.”

FSSA archived old press releases and slide decks while the Department of Correction nixed select annual reports. The Indiana Professional Licensing Agency removed documents for 11 agency meetings.

“As the documents discussed above are required pursuant to Open Door Law, PLA will continue to follow its traditional archiving policies,” the agency said in the report. 

The Indiana Department of Transportation reported that meeting minutes from a Bloomington Monroe County Metropolitan Planning Organization meeting included a DEI focus group discussion. INDOT stated that such meetings fall under the Open Door Law’s requirements.

“It’s as if they’re trying everything that has happened in the past, and I think that is a very dangerous road that we’re going now. It’s one thing, if moving forward, you want to change a policy going forward,” Pryor said. “You don’t want your newsletters or blogs or websites to have information and presentations, but the fact that, in retrospect, they’re trying to basically erase the African American community completely out of the state of Indiana, is just mind boggling to me.

“(It’s) trying to erase me, and that is dangerous.”