Even as corporate efforts to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives continue to fail nationwide, Joe Biden’s federal government has been working behind the scenes to force private businesses to use race-based criteria for hiring and promotion practices.

According to Just The News, attorneys general from 19 different states have formed a coalition to push back against federal efforts to force DEI onto the states and private businesses. The group is led by Attorneys General Kris Kobach (R-Kan.), Austin Knudsen (R-Mt.), and Jonathan Skrmetti (R-Tenn.), who signed an open letter to the Department of Commerce (DOC) requesting that it demand its “Business Diversity Principles,” which the attorneys general claim is in violation of both the 14th Amendment and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.

Others who signed the letter include Attorney General Andrew Bailey (R-Mo.), and Governor Jeff Landry (R-La.), who was Attorney General of Louisiana prior to winning last year’s gubernatorial election. The letter denounces “superficially race-neutral measures,” which it says are actually a new form of racial discrimination.

The letter warns that the DOC’s efforts go against the Supreme Court’s ban on such racially selective processes, which were further outlawed following the landmark ruling last year in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, in which the court banned the practice of affirmative action, or race-based admissions, nationwide. As such, if any of the DOC’s recommended initiatives were to be implemented, it could lead to further lawsuits against the businesses who enact such policies.

“That not even some of the nation’s leading law firms can craft a colorable defense to race-based DEIA efforts speaks volumes about their lack of legal footing,” the letter states.

Several prominent examples of DEI programs being abandoned include the University of Wisconsin, which is facing lawsuits alleging discrimination against a White diversity official, as well as a “diversity clerkship program” that was made specifically for non-White applicants; the National Institutes of Health (NIH) was forced to eliminate the race-based requirements that were initially present for its “underrepresented student program” internship, which was determined to be discriminatory against White and Asian applicants.

“Make no mistake: Express racial quotas have never been lawful,” the letter from the attorneys general declares.