Gus Bilirakis has been in Congress for 19 years. In that time he has put his name on hundreds of bills — Greek independence resolutions, veterans' benefits, rare disease research, daylight saving time.
He has also introduced, twice, a bill that would cut off federal student loans to students at any college in America that has a diversity office.
It is called the Eliminate DEI in Colleges Act. He filed it in June 2024 and again on February 13, 2025. It has two cosponsors.
What it actually says
Here is the operative sentence, from the bill text:
"Notwithstanding any other provision of law, no institution of higher education shall be eligible to receive funds or any other form of financial assistance under any Federal program, including participation in any federally funded or guaranteed student loan program, unless the institution certifies to the Secretary that the institution — (1) does not and will not carry out any program, project, initiative, or other activity the primary purpose of which is to advocate, promote, or otherwise support diversity, equity, and inclusion; and (2) does not and will not maintain any office or other entity within the institution to advocate, promote, or otherwise support diversity, equity, and inclusion."
Read what that covers. Not "no federal DEI grants." Not "no taxpayer money for DEI programs." Any federal program. Explicitly including the federal student loan programs.
A college that keeps a diversity office does not lose a diversity grant. It loses its students' access to federal loans. It becomes, for federal purposes, not a college.
The bill also requires each school to hand the Education Secretary "any information needed" to verify its certification is truthful, and gives the Secretary regulatory authority to enforce it. A school that gets cut off may appeal to an administrative law judge, and that judge's ruling is final agency action.
The definition is broader than the title
The bill defines "diversity, equity, and inclusion" as the concept by which individuals are "classified on basis of race, color, sex, national origin, gender identity, or sexual orientation" and then "afforded differential or preferential treatment" on that basis.
That definition is doing a lot of work, because it is written loosely enough to sweep in far more than admissions preferences. A women's center. A veterans' resource office. A first-generation-student mentoring program. A campus group for LGBTQ students with a staff adviser. An office of accessibility. Whether any of those counts is left to the Secretary of Education and to a school's own lawyers guessing at what a future administration will accept.
And the incentive runs one way. A university weighing whether some office might trip the certification is not weighing the loss of a grant. It is weighing whether its students can still get a Stafford loan. The rational response is to close anything arguable.
Who pays
Nothing in the bill distinguishes between a flagship research university and a community college, or between a public school and a private one. The penalty is the same everywhere, and it falls on students, not administrators: the school keeps its diversity office and its students lose their loans, or the school closes the office.
Florida has already banned state spending on DEI programs at its public universities. What Bilirakis's bill adds is federal reach — over every private college in the country too — and a penalty aimed not at the institution's budget line but at its students' ability to pay tuition.
He has a record on this
The DEI bill is not a one-off.
On March 30, 2022, the House took up a bill to name the federal courthouse in Tallahassee after Joseph Woodrow Hatchett. Hatchett was the first Black justice on the Florida Supreme Court. He later sat on the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The New York Times called him a legal legend; the Tallahassee Democrat called him trailblazing. He died in April 2021.
The bill was sponsored by Florida's two Republican senators, Marco Rubio and Rick Scott. The Senate passed it unanimously.
Then Rep. Andrew Clyde of Georgia circulated a 1999 Associated Press story about an opinion Hatchett had written striking down a Florida school district's policy of student-led prayer at graduation, and House Republicans turned on it. The bill got 238 votes — short of the two-thirds needed under suspension — and failed. One hundred eighty-seven Republicans voted no.
Bilirakis voted no. Ten of Florida's 16 House Republicans did.
Clyde's explanation to the ABA Journal was that he disagreed with the 1999 ruling: "I don't agree with that. That's it. I just let the Republicans know that information on the House floor."
Two Republican senators from his own state sponsored the honor and the Senate gave it unanimously. Bilirakis voted it down.
The grandson of immigrants
Bilirakis is the grandson of Greek immigrants. His grandfather ran a bakery in Tarpon Springs, where the sponge docks were built by Greek divers recruited to Florida in the early 1900s. He co-chairs the Congressional Caucus on Hellenic Issues and files a resolution recognizing the anniversary of the Greek War of Independence year after year — 2024, 2025, and 2026. He holds the Greek Order of the Phoenix.
He clearly understands why a community wants its history recognized and its people counted.
He has introduced a bill to cut federal student loans off from any campus that keeps an office to do that for somebody else's community — and voted against putting a Black judge's name on a courthouse in his own state.
Sources
Bill text and status: H.R. 1282, the Eliminate DEI in Colleges Act, 119th Congress. House vote on the Hatchett courthouse designation: Roll Call 95, March 30, 2022. GOP opposition blocks bill to name federal courthouse after Black judge, a 'legal legend' — ABA Journal. Photo: official congressional portrait.
