Even As Companies Retreat From Diversity Efforts, Many Quash Anti-DEI Shareholder Resolutions

Forbes

08-05-2025

Shareholders are voting down anti-DEI measures as companies quietly change websites and rollback DEI policies.
Last month, 98% of Goldman Sachs' shareholders took the advice of the firm's board and voted against two anti-diversity, equity and inclusion proposals. Was Goldman Sachs boldly standing up for DEI, while some other big banks were retreating on the issue? (JPMorgan Chase, for example, renamed all its DEI efforts DOI, for Diversity, Opportunity and Inclusion.)
Not exactly. In fact, earlier this year GS quietly removed its entire diversity and inclusion section from its annual report this year and just last week it purged mentions of race in its signature 'Black in Business' program, suggesting that Black now meant profit i.e. in-the-black.
But in addition to their general aversion to resolutions sponsored by individual shareholders, companies are resisting the urge to incorporate anti-DEI stances into their governance, just as they have generally resisted efforts by shareholders to mandate pro-DEI policies.
'I think what Goldman is doing (on the shareholder resolutions) is actually good business,' says Sonya Mishra, assistant professor at Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business who teaches a course on leading diverse organizations. 'They are thinking about the long term reputational effects and signaling to the public—their shareholders and employees—that DEI is important and integral to their business.'
Goldman's mixed choices are emblematic of the tricky balancing act employers are undertaking–when deciding what DEI measures, if any, to continue. They're being buffeted between intense pressure from President Trump's Administration to abolish what the White House has branded 'dangerous, demeaning and immoral' DEI practices; the anti-discrimination protections that are incorporated into existing case law; and demands (in all directions) from shareholders, customers and their own employees.
Public companies across a range of industries, including such big names as Pfizer, Pepsi and Coca-Cola, have successfully recommended shareholders vote down anti-DEI proposals presented at their annual shareholder meetings. Even more, including Merck, Ford Motors and McDonald's, have recommended no votes on anti-DEI resolutions ahead of upcoming shareholder meetings.
Yet that doesn't mean they aren't, in their own ways, responding to anti-DEI pressures. There is no consensus on what, or whom, to follow when it comes to DEI policies, says Joan Williams, founding director of the Equality Action Center and a professor (emerita) at UC Law/San Francisco. 'There are a lot of companies that are trying to reframe the work in a way that will lower regulatory risk.'
The employer pullback from DEI measures started before Trump's reelection, following a smattering of legal decisions against alleged reverse discrimination and the August 2023 Supreme Court decision ending racial considerations in college admissions. By early 2024, investors (and conservative legal activists) were pressuring companies to abandon their DEI commitments. Conservative influencer Robby Starbuck led the charge–he claims credit for getting more than 15 companies, including Walmart, Toyota and Target, to roll back their policies. (The companies don't necessarily agree with his claims.)
This annual meeting season, conservative groups like the National Center For Public Policy Research, The Nathan Cummings Foundation and the National Legal and Policy Center have offered anti-DEI proposals, largely focusing on removing DEI considerations from executive compensation. As of April, 13 anti-DEI proposals were filed at U.S. public companies, according to The Conference Board, where they now make up 40% of all DEI proposals filed so far in 2025, up from 23% of those filed in 2024 and 1% in 2021.
Pro-DEI measures, which made up the bulk of all diversity-related shareholder proposals until this year, have also been widely rejected by shareholders at the recommendation of companies' boards. At car retailer Auto-Nation, for example, a proposal this year for a report on the effectiveness of the company's DEI measures was voted down following a recommendation of the board. Other pro-DEI proposals have been withdrawn, including one that called on John Deere to look at whether its rollback of DEI measures truly produced a meritocratic result.
In the wake of the May, 2020 murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police and the protests that followed, companies began adding diversity hiring goals as a factor in determining executives' compensation. (They did this on their own, not as a result of shareholder measures.) The practice peaked in 2023, when 76% of S&P 500 companies integrated metrics related to diversity and inclusion into top executives' pay, up from 52% in 2021, according to an analysis of proxy statements by The Conference Board and data analytics firm ESGAUGE. But by mid-2024, only 65.5% of the S&P 500 integrated DEI into pay metrics, according to the same study. (It's worth noting that most proxies are issued in the first half of the year, with shareholder proposals due several months prior, meaning that the impact of the 2023 Supreme Court decision wouldn't have shown up in proxies until 2024, at the earliest.)
So far this year, all of the shareholder anti-DEI proposals voted on have failed. In January, Costco shareholders overwhelmingly rejected a shareholder call for an audit into the 'litigation, reputational and financial risks' associated with the company's diversity measures. The retailer has emerged as a prominent supporter of DEI as competitors Walmart and Target have rolled back their DEI efforts. Target, which has been hit by consumer boycotts for rolling back DEI, has seen its foot and web traffic decline since the beginning of the year, while Costco's has continuously increased, according to data from Placer.ai.
Conservative advocates aren't convinced the vote results mean the companies–or their shareholders–are DEI champions. 'I reject any characterization of [the vote] being an embrace of DEI by shareholders,' says Stefan Padfield, executive director of the National Center's Free Enterprise Project which unsuccessfully pushed a shareholder resolution calling for an audit of Goldman Sachs' DEI measures. He argues that some shareholders generally disagree with the idea of more audits, no matter the subject matter.
Natalie Norfus, a DEI consultant with her own firm, agrees that it's dangerous to read too much into the wholesale rejection–by corporations and their shareholders– of anti-DEI resolutions. While some companies are retreating from DEI efforts, she says, 'A lot of companies, and some of our clients, are just focusing on how they rename it so that they're not caught up in the fire of the villainization of the acronym.'