Diversity statements were used to facilitate race-based grant approvals. They should never have been legal.

This is false. The grants were not approved based on race. The grants were approved based on merit toward the goals of the field of science to which they were submitted. Showing how your work had broader impacts toward a more diverse, equitable and inclusive society was one part of a list of many criteria, recently updated here:

https://new.nsf.gov/funding/merit-review#our-merit-review-cr...

I think a link to archive.org might be better here, the criteria changed and so must have the website as well no?

Never were legal.

Compelled speech is far, far, far worse than constricting speech by every conceivable dimension.

Even in day to day interaction, forcing someone to be silent, is far more of a gentler 'social action' than forcing someone to speak.

I don't think I agree. What's your reasoning?

Really? You see a narrow contextual restriction for irrelevant information in a grant/hiring packet to be worse than compelled speech?