Finally, some accountability for JPMorgan Chase

Last week, the Securities and Exchange Commission issued an important letter to JPMorgan Chase. In effect, the agency told the bank that it had acted wrongly in deciding that a proposal regarding viewpoint discrimination in service provision should not be placed before shareholders. This was a stunning defeat for America’s largest bank and a major victory for Christian financial advisor David Bahnsen.

Bahnsen is a shareholder of the bank, and he used his right to propose a resolution calling upon the bank to be transparent about how it decides with whom it will and will not do business. Bahnsen fulfilled all of the necessary requirements. By his shares, he qualified to place such a resolution. He held them for more than the required holding period. He filed the paperwork in correct format and on time.

However, JPMorgan Chase did not want to publish the resolution on their proxy statement to be voted on at the annual meeting. The bank argued that the topic was merely a matter of “ordinary business” operations. Bahnsen, with the help of Alliance Defending Freedom and powerhouse DC law firm Boyden Gray, responded that the topic is a matter of civil rights and broad social concern and also of the reputation of the company, matters which the SEC has upheld as worthy of shareholder attention in the past. And the SEC stayed consistent with its past practices, siding with Bahnsen. The owners of the company will be given the opportunity to vote on the matter on May 16.

What prompted the concerns over JP Morgan and debanking was the matter of Ambassador Sam Brownback. The former governor, senator, and United States ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom formed the National Committee for Religious Freedom to promote religious liberty. The group hired an executive director who set up a bank account at Chase because he had once been a teller for the bank as a starter job. One day, Brownback and his wife went down to their local Chase branch office to deposit a contribution to help the organization get started and were told their account was no longer open. The teller had no other information.  

Eventually Brownback learned that the decision had been made at the corporate level, that the note in the file instructed employees not to reveal any information about the cancellation, and that the decision was irrevocable. Later, he was told that perhaps Chase might be persuaded to accept them back as customers if the organization would be willing to reveal its private donor list and its political intentions. Brownback chose to protect the privacy of his donors. Brownback never received any plausible explanation for what happened.  

The issue is not limited to Chase or even to traditional banking. Fidelity’s donor-advised fund program has shown signs of going wobbly in response to pressure to violate donor anonymity for charities designated as “hate groups.” PayPal, WellsFargo, Morgan Stanley, Capitol One, and Visa have either “debanked” conservative groups or adopted policies based on highly subjective criteria such as (wink, wink) “hate … misinformation … intolerance.” You can place your bets as to whether that will be applied in an ideologically balanced way.   

Christians have been behind the curve about what’s been going on in corporate politics, but thanks to people like Bahnsen, who are willing to use their vote and put their name on the line, they’re catching up quickly. There are many tools at our disposal, such as voting on proxies, asking probing questions at annual meetings, and having conversations with investor relations.

But I can say as someone who has participated in this process that the most powerful tool by far is placing a proposal on the ballot. It sets the agenda and allows the proponent to make the case unfiltered directly to the shareholders. There are many companies in need of this type of oversight and an overabundance of topics that require attention. The only thing that has been in short supply is investors willing to go to the trouble and cut through the paperwork to be salt and light to an “unreached people group,” the managers of publicly traded companies. We need more Christians to follow David Bahnsen’s example and take a stand.