FIRST-ON-FOX: Walmart investors supportive of the company’s decision to roll back its DEI initiatives have issued a letter urging the big box retailer to stay the course as it faces immense backlash from Democratic officials and left-wing shareholders.
The letter — which was drafted by the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative group, and signed by a collection of over 60 investors, advisors and proxy consultant groups — hails Walmart’s decision to roll back DEI, saying the decision “restores the promise of the American Dream.”
ADF senior counsel Jeremy Tedesco told Fox News Digital he hopes the letter will give Walmart the “courage and the arguments they need to continue with what was a very good decision.”
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“Walmart, the best decision for them, is to put DEI in the dustbin of bad corporate policy decisions,” Tedesco said.
The retailer announced in November that they would be reigning in their DEI policies, joining a growing list of corporations that have scaled back their DEI initiatives. Walmart vowed to remove certain third-party transgender products inappropriately marketed towards children from their online stores, and review grants given to Pride events to avoid sexualized programming targeted towards children.
Walmart also ended its participation in the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality index, which grades companies on its LGBTQ policies, and vowed to cease using the terms “LatinX” and “DEI” in official communications.
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“Like many companies all across the U.S., we’ve been on a journey,” Furner said. “We’ll continue to be on a journey. And what we’re trying to do is to ensure every customer, every associate feels welcomed here in the shop and to feel like they belong,” Walmart US CEO and President John Furner told CBS Mornings in November.
The letter was drafted in response to a previous letter drafted by 30 Walmart shareholders blasting their DEI rollbacks.
“Seeing the company retreat from its stated values and the business opportunities associated with a diverse and inclusive workforce is very disheartening, additionally, Walmart has not offered a financial or business case for this change in policy, but the company identified advancing ‘belonging, diversity, equity and inclusion’ as one of four priority ESG issues that offer the greatest potential for Walmart to create shared value,” the signatories wrote in January.
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Walmart, which is the country’s largest private employer, was targeted by 13 Democratic state attorneys general, which also sent a letter the day after the left-wing shareholders pressed the retailer to reconsider its decision to eliminate many of its DEI initiatives.
“Threats to boycott, sue or otherwise negatively impact Walmart’s bottom line may well have contributed to your decision to walk away from your commitments to DEI. But we are concerned that Walmart failed to consider the other side — the customers and employees that will be alienated by this departure,” the state AG’s wrote.
Bowyer Research fund president Jerry Bowyer says that Walmart was “smart” to move away from DEI and feels that Democratic-led states are attempting to intimidate the retailer into backsliding on DEI by throwing their weight and pension money around.
Bowyer, a signatory to the letter, said Walmart meant well in adopting DEI in the wake of George Floyd’s death, but failed to “read the fine print” on how these policies would require them to “stop treating people equally.”
Inspire Investing CEO Robert Netzly, told Fox News Digital that his firm, which represents faith-based investors from across the country, signed the letter because his clients have “deep concerns” about DEI and view the policies as “immoral” and “divisive.”
“Those policies not only hurt the people who work there by providing an unfair and discriminatory environment, but also introduce legal risks and shareholder risk from [a] financial standpoint,” he said.
Walmart didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
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