A growing number of prominent companies have scaled back or set aside the diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives that much of corporate America endorsed following the protests that accompanied the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd, a Black man, in 2020.

The changes have come in response to a campaign by conservative activists to target workplace programs in the courts and social media, and more recently, President Donald Trump’s executive orders aimed at upending DEI policies in both the federal government and private sector.

DEI policies typically are intended to root out systemic barriers to the advancement of historically marginalized groups in certain fields or roles. Critics argue that some education, government and business programs are discriminatory because they single out participants based on factors such as race, gender and sexual orientation. They have targeted corporate sponsorships, employee-led affinity groups, programs aimed at steering contracts to minority or women-owned businesses, and goals that some companies established for increasing minority representation in leadership ranks.

While hiring or promotion decisions based on race or gender is illegal under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act in most circumstances, companies say they are not doing that. Instead, they say they aspire to diversify their workforce over time through policies like widening candidate pools for job openings.

Goldman Sachs

Investment firm Goldman Sachs confirmed that it was dropping a requirement that forced IPO clients to include women and members of minority groups on their board of directors.

“As a result of legal developments related to board diversity requirements, we ended our formal board diversity policy,” said a Goldman Sachs spokesman in an email to The Associated Press. “We continue to believe that successful boards benefit from diverse backgrounds and perspectives, and we will encourage them to take this approach.”

Goldman Sachs said that it will still have a placement service that connects its clients with diverse candidates to serve on their boards.

Google

Google rescinded a goal it had set in 2020 to increase representation of underrepresented groups among the company’s leadership team by 30% within five years. In a memo to employees, the company also said it was considering other changes in response to Trump’s executive order aimed at prohibiting federal contractors from conducting DEI practices that constitute “illegal discrimination.”

Google’s parent company Alphabet also signaled things were changing in its annual 10-K report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The report dropped a boilerplate sentence it has used since 2020 declaring that the company is “committed to making diversity, equity, and inclusion part of everything we do and to growing a workforce that is representative of the users we serve.”

Target

The retailer said that changes to its “Belonging at the Bullseye” strategy would include ending a program it established to help Black employees build meaningful careers, improve the experience of Black shoppers and to promote Black-owned businesses following Floyd’s death in Minneapolis, where Target has its headquarters. Target, which operates nearly 2,000 stores nationwide and employs more than 400,000 people, said it also would conclude the diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, goals it previously set in three-year cycles.

The goals included hiring and promoting more women and members of racial minority groups, and recruiting more diverse suppliers, including businesses owned by people of color, women, LGBTQ+ people, veterans and people with disabilities.

Target also will no longer participate in surveys designed to gauge the effectiveness of its actions, including an annual index compiled by the Human Rights Campaign, a national LGBTQ+ rights organization. Target also said it would further evaluate corporate partnerships to ensure they’re connected directly to business objectives, but declined to share details.

Meta Platforms

The parent company of Facebook and Instagram said it was getting rid of its diversity, equity and inclusion program, which featured policies for hiring, training and picking vendors.

Like other companies that announced similar changes before Meta, the social media giant said it had been reviewing the program since the Supreme Court’s July 2023 ruling upending affirmative action in higher education.

Citing an internal memo sent to employees, news website Axios reported the Menlo Park, California-based tech giant said it would no longer have a team focused on diversity and inclusion and will instead “focus on how to apply fair and consistent practices that mitigate bias for all, no matter your background.”