Civil rights groups urge Fortune 1000 to protect DEI

Twenty civil rights organizations sent a letter Thursday to Fortune 1000 companies calling for them to recommit to diversity, equity and inclusion, after several major companies scaled back their efforts.

The call to action comes after businesses including Ford, Tractor Supply, Brown-Forman announced plans to change or entirely end internal DEI initiatives.

“Abandoning DEI will have long-term consequences on business success,” the authors of the letter wrote. “Ultimately shirking fiduciary responsibility to employees, consumers, and shareholders.”

“These shortsighted decisions make our workplaces less safe and less inclusive for hard-working Americans,” the letter adds.

A range of corporations have curbed their DEI efforts, which picked up in 2020 after a national reckoning over racial injustice sparked by the police killing of George Floyd. Legal experts saw the Supreme Court’s ruling on affirmative action last year as a roadmap for targeting private corporations prioritizing employee, supplier and consumer diversity. While some right-wing activists have claimed credit for pressuring companies on social media into making the changes in recent weeks, several corporations have said changes have been in the works since March.

Rural retailer Tractor Supply started a trend specifically by severing ties with LGBTQ+ advocacy group the Human Rights Campaign, also know as HRC, which is among the letter’s signatories.

Several companies, including Molson Coors, Harley Davidson, Ford and Lowe’s all followed suit. They said they will no longer provide data to the nonprofit’s Corporate Equality Index, a traditionally respected barometer for which companies best meet the needs of the LGBTQ+ community.

HRC President Kelley Robinson told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” last week that there’s a strong business case for diversity in the workplace.

“Consumers are two times more likely to want to buy from brands that support the community,” said Robinson. “This is bottom line the best thing to do for businesses, and that’s why I think that we’re seeing so much energy from employees from consumers and from shareholders starting to push back on these decisions.”

She emphasized that LGBTQ+ consumers have $1.4 trillion of buying power, as reported by the National LGBT Chamber of Commerce. Robinson called moving away from DEI the “wrong decision for business”.

The HRC responded to the companies that rolled back DEI commitments by cutting their Corporate Equality Index scores by 25 points.

On a 100-point scale, that deduction brings Brown-Forman, Lowe’s, Ford and Molson Coors from a perfect score of 100 to 75. Tractor Supply & John Deere fall from 95 to 70. And Harley-Davidson‘s Corporate Equality Index score drops from 45 to 20.

The companies mentioned in this article did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

In the letter to the Fortune 1000 companies, the civil rights groups argued pulling back from DEI not only hurts their standing with consumers, but also risks their ability…