Course correction?

Conservative activist Robby Starbuck made a bold proclamation on social media after beer maker Molson Coors said it would scale back its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives: “Sanity is making a comeback.”

On Sept. 3, Molson Coors joined a string of other big-name companies making similar moves, and Starbuck has been riding the wave of success. For months, he’s worked to expose corporations with progressive DEI policies to his more than 600,000 followers on X. The companies—including Ford, Lowe’s, John Deere, Tractor Supply Co., and Jack Daniels distiller Brown-Forman—all recently announced changes to their diversity initiatives. In an internal memo, Molson Coors said it would eliminate supplier-­diversity goals, typically directed at ­purchasing from minority or female-owned businesses. The brewer also announced it would no longer participate in the Human Rights Campaign’s LGBTQ “workplace inclusion” scoring index, the pinnacle of activist influence in the boardroom.

But fear of being Starbuck’s next target is not the only driving force behind the trend in corporate America to backtrack on DEI policies. Behind the scenes, more companies are evaluating the legality of workplace and supplier diversity metrics put in place to meet progressive demands. Legal risks may be steering many ­corporations away from overt activism.

“Every time a large mover makes the same call, it becomes less credible for other large corporations to pretend that they didn’t know that what they were doing was illegal,” said Dan Morenoff, executive director of the American Civil Rights Project and adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute. “The pressure point is only going to get more intense.”

The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2023 decision to strike down the use of affirmative action in college admissions kick-started the corporate defection from DEI initiatives. More than a dozen Republican attorneys general promptly issued a letter warning major corporations of “serious legal consequences” should they continue race-based quotas and preferences in employment and contracting. In the private sector, the court ruling served as a “gut check to go back and look at whether the things [companies] were doing were remotely defensible,” Morenoff said. “A growing crescendo of corporations are coming to the conclusion that the answer is ‘no.’”

A mechanic works on a motorcycle at a Harley-Davidson showroom and repair shop in Lindon, Utah. George Frey/Bloomberg via Getty Images

The level of corporate retreat has varied. Ford also severed ties with the Human Rights Cam­paign’s diversity index, a decision that aligns with a broader refocusing of employee resources for business goals. Lowe’s and Harley-Davidson did the same, with the motorcycle manufacturer and John Deere announcing they would no longer sponsor events on nonbusiness social issues. Harley-Davidson said its future sponsorships would focus on retaining loyal customers and supporting first responders and the military. Tractor Supply Co. axed company goals of reducing carbon emissions and eliminated DEI-related jobs.

Starbuck, a 35-year-old former Hollywood director, has taken credit for the recent corporate reversals including Lowe’s, Harley-Davidson, John Deere, and Tractor Supply. But some of the companies claim they hadn’t faced public criticism from Starbuck when they announced their changes, according to a Wall Street Journal report. A memo issued by Lowe’s in August claimed its executives started reconsidering DEI policies after the 2023 Supreme Court ruling to ensure the store’s policies were lawful.

Still, public backlash certainly has contributed to the drop in DEI engagement. Anheuser-Busch Inbev, parent company of Bud Light, famously suffered boycotts related to its marketing partnership with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney. The next year, the beer company partnered with comedian Shane Gillis, a once-­canceled comedian popular among conservative crowds.

WORLD reached out to Molson Coors, Ford, Harley-Davidson, Tractor Supply Co., Lowe’s, and John Deere for more detail on why and how their policies changed, but none of the companies responded.

A Tractor Supply store in Pembroke Pines, Fla. Amy Beth Bennett/South Florida Sun Sentinel/Tribune News Service via Getty Images

Starbuck’s social media campaigns have played a central role in riling the largely conservative customer base of the companies he targets. Revenue from subscribers to his social media pages helps fund the operation. Starbuck has two employees and relies on “open source research … combined with whistleblowers who come to us with evidence of wokeness in their companies,” he told us. When presented with the evidence, he said, most executives agree to an off-the-record conversation with him: “Often, they follow up with me about what changes they’re making.”

Starbuck began campaigning against corporate DEI initiatives because he is “sick of wokeness and division invading every part of society,” he said.

The roots of DEI trace back to the affirmative action and equal employment initiatives following the civil rights movement. In the 1980s and ’90s, employers began recognizing not just race and gender but ethnic, religious, and LGBTQ “identities.” Fast-forward to 2019 and 2020, and activism from the Black Lives Matter movement following the death of George Floyd, when job postings in “diversity, inclusion, and belonging” jumped 56 percent, according to Indeed, an employment website.

Many companies practice DEI by discussing topics like “unconscious bias” in formal training and choose new hires to diversify their employee pool. According to the Harvard Business School, DEI aims to build a positive work culture that fosters creativity and innovation.

But in recent years, the tide has started to turn. Between 2022 and 2023, DEI job postings plummeted more than 40 percent, Indeed reported. Several DEI executives at Netflix, Disney, and Warner Bros. Discovery have stepped down since the beginning of this year. Following the Supreme Court’s affirmative action ruling, states such as Texas, Tennessee, and Utah enacted laws to limit or end the use of DEI in schools and the workplace.

Critics argue DEI policies reinforce victimhood and entitlement mindsets and cause qualified workers to lose opportunities simply because they do not belong to a minority group. Besides Starbuck, conservative journalist Christopher Rufo, former GOP presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy, and the Christian legal group Alliance Defending Freedom have shined a spotlight on corporate diversity efforts.

“It really is a raft of people all pushing back, ranging from activists to fiduciaries who recognize that it’s a real cost,” said Nate Fischer, CEO of New Founding, a venture firm explicitly opposed to DEI. As a Christian, Fischer says that opposition stems from the belief that people should not be reduced to “interchangeable cogs.” Diversity initiatives strip away the “creative nature and judgment God gave us … modeled after His creation of the world,” he argued.

Fischer is not as confident as Starbuck that sanity is returning to corporate America. He worries that the workforce will become further bifurcated. “I think you will see more tribal splitting … companies more firmly in the red camp or the blue camp.”

As for companies that try to play both sides, he’s even less optimistic: “I don’t know the extent to which that’s going to be possible.”