Disney Boldly Refuses to Cut Ties with HRC
Despite conservative pressure, Disney investors overwhelmingly rejected a proposal to stop participating in HRC's equality ratings survey.
The Walt Disney Company overwhelmingly rejected a proposal to cut ties with the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ advocacy organization.
The proposal, submitted to Disney’s shareholders by the right-wing National Center for Public Policy Research’s Free Enterprise Project, demanded that the company “cease” its participation in HRC’s Corporate Equality Index (CEI).
The CEI rates companies on how LGBTQ-friendly or -affirming their employment or employee benefits policies are.
NCPPR’s proposal argued that Disney’s involvement with the CEI has alienated conservatives, hurting the company’s brand by aligning itself with the LGBTQ community, having pro-LGBTQ workplace policies, and damaging the company’s stock price.
“When corporations take extreme positions, they destroy shareholder value by alienating large portions of their customers and investors,” the proposal stated. “This proposal provides Disney with an opportunity to move back to neutral.”
It noted that Disney has received a “perfect score” on HRC’s CEI since 2007, which it argued “can only be attained by abiding by [HRC’s] partisan, divisive and increasingly radical criteria.”
In December 2023, Disney boasted of its commitment to LGBTQ equality and its record of perfect scores on the CEI.
NCPPR’s Free Enterprise Project criticized HRC for its defense of transgender rights, accusing the organization of seeking to “sow gender confusion in children, encourage irreversible surgical procedures on confused teens, effectively eliminate girls’ and women’s sports and bathrooms, and roll back longstanding religious liberties.”
The proposal alleged that Disney took an activist role by injecting itself into the debate over Florida’s “Parental Rights in Education Act,” also known as the “Don’t Say Gay” law when state lawmakers were considering it.
Disney’s board of directors recommended voting against the proposal to stop participating in the CEI.
“Given the Company’s existing practices to assess participation in transparency efforts and the Board’s oversight of ESG [environmental, social and governance] reporting, workforce equity matters and human rights policies, we do not believe this proposal would provide additional value to shareholders,” the board said in a statement.
Ultimately, only 1% of shareholders voted in favor of the proposal.
The vote comes nearly a month after Disney scaled back its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies, just as other major corporations have done in response to threats of boycotts and pressure campaigns from conservative activists.
The list of companies that have dropped DEI policies includes John Deere, Harley-Davidson, Walmart, Best Buy, McDonald’s, Starbucks, and Target — the latter of which is currently a target of multiple boycotts.
The pressure on companies to axe their DEI initiatives and programs has increased since the election of President Donald Trump, who has issued an executive order eliminating DEI practices in the federal government and directing the Department of Justice to investigate private-sector companies that retain DEI policies.
Eric Bloem, the vice president of corporate citizenship at the Human Rights Campaign Foundation, celebrated the rejection of the NCPPR proposal.
“This vote gives us a clear statement of values from Disney’s shareholders,” Bloem said in a statement. “They know what we know — that despite all the noise, commitments to inclusion pay figurative dividends and help their literal bottom line.”
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