Companies Under Pressure to Ditch DEI

Some of the biggest companies are ending their diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives — and doing so quickly.

• Brown-Forman, maker of Jack Daniel’s whiskey, is ending its “quantitative workforce and supplier diversity ambitions … [and its] participation in the Human Rights Campaign’s (HRC) Corporate Equality Index Survey.”
• Motorcycle pioneer Harley-Davidson, home improvement retail giant Lowe’s and Coors Light agreed to drop out of the HRC survey. Lowe’s also promises to stop sponsoring or participating in gay pride “festivals, parades and fairs.”
• Other companies announced they’ll be ending most if not all of their DEI practices, such as Ford Motor and Tractor Supply. They join companies in other fields such as accounting to do the same.

In all of the cases above, pressure by conservative activist Robby Starbuck forced the companies’ hands. Brown-Forman, for example, emailed Starbuck of its decision to ditch DEI just days after receiving complaints.

Employees of companies that promote DEI causes have been contacting Starbuck and providing detailed info on the programs their employers are supporting. Tractor Supply was funding “youth centers [that support] transitioning kids … and a group in favor of illegal immigration and stopping deportations,” according to Starbuck.

DEI Programs Pose a Risk for Employers

Activists like Starbuck — and legal watchdog groups like Stephen Miller’s America First Legal — are applying pressure to “woke” companies. They’re getting results because the law is on their side.

“The Supreme Court’s 2023 Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard ruling concerned unconstitutional discrimination in college admissions,” according to the Wall Street Journal. “But Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in a concurrence that discrimination in all federally funded programs is also banned under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The interpretation almost certainly applies to Title VII, and companies run the risk of becoming test cases if they don’t abandon the DEI framework.”

Companies that continue to prioritize race in their hiring practices face the threat of class-action lawsuits. For example, IBM is being sued by a veteran White employee who alleges he and many other employees were let go because of their race.

DEI programs that seek to increase the number of Black, Hispanic and other minority participants do so at the expense of Whites and Asians. The Harvard case found White and Asian college applicants who scored higher than minorities are being shut out.

A while back we reported on how employers’ HR teams aren’t hiring White men and women. One in six hiring managers admitted they’d been told by a higher-up to refuse interviews to White job candidates, according to a ResumeBuilder survey. Those numbers may start to drop in the wake of the Harvard ruling and the real threat of lawsuits.