Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

27. Financial Regulatory Agencies · Notable · Needs Congress

Prohibit securities regulators and SROs from race- or sex-based rulemaking

Not started

832 27. Financial Regulatory Agencies

“Prohibit securities regulators, including SROs, from promulgating rules or taking other actions that discriminate, either favorably or unfavorably, on the basis of the race, color, religion, sex, or national origin of such individual or group.”

What has happened

  1. Not started

    No statute or rule prohibits securities regulators or self-regulatory organizations from acting on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin. No bill of the 119th Congress in the Corpus would impose such a prohibition: title greps for 'discriminat' return civil-rights, immigration, disaster-assistance and gaming-tax measures, none of them about securities rulemaking. The nearest thing that happened is one rule going off the books rather than a prohibition going on: the SEC noticed Nasdaq's repeal of its Board Diversity Listing Requirement as immediately effective on 2025-01-30, which is recorded on #2128. Executive Order 14151 (2025-01-20) directs agencies to end their own DEI programs but binds neither self-regulatory organizations, which are private bodies, nor a future Commission, and it is not the statutory bar the Quote asks Congress for.

    No action found yet. This entry is the starting point, not a finding.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

  • The ask is a statutory prohibition running against the SEC, the CFTC and the SROs at once, in both directions (“either favorably or unfavorably”). Only Congress can impose it, and Congress has not.
  • Why the Nasdaq repeal is not this ask. Removing one discriminatory listing rule is progress on #2128, which asks for such regulations to be eliminated. It is not progress on a general prohibition against making them, which is what this Quote asks for. Playbook §3b: progress is measured on this ask.
  • Adjacent executive action, not counted. EO 14151 (ending federal DEI programs) and EO 14173 (ending affirmative-action requirements in federal contracting) reach federal agencies and contractors. Neither reaches FINRA, the MSRB, the exchanges or the NFA, which are the “SROs” the Quote names, and neither is a durable prohibition on rulemaking.
  • Searched. bills.ndjson title greps for “discriminat”, “race”, “sex” combined with securities and financial subjects; Federal Register full text for “self-regulatory organization” limited to SEC rules and proposed rules, which returns eight documents, all about filing mechanics, arbitration provisions, Form PF and Regulation NMS.
Action
restrict
Object
rules by securities regulators and SROs that discriminate on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin
ID
2144