 When the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization this summer, overturning Roe v. Wade, many large companies weighed in to signal their opposition to the Court’s determination that states have a strong interest in protecting the life of the unborn. Companies including Disney, Amazon, JP Morgan Chase, Starbucks, and Google announced that they will now pay for employees who live in pro-life states to travel elsewhere to get an abortion. 

But if these powerful companies claim to be “pro woman,” why aren’t they willing to dedicate the same resources to support mothers who choose to go through with their pregnancies, and where necessary, pursue adoption as an alternative to abortion? 

That’s a question asked recently at National Review by Denise Harle, Senior Counsel and Director of the Center for Life at Alliance Defending Freedom. Harle, whose team worked alongside the state of Mississippi to pass and defend the 15-week abortion prohibition upheld by the Supreme Court in Dobbs, argues that companies offering to cover abortion travel costs are not only making an ethical error, but a business mistake as well.

“Businesses that tout one-time abortion-travel payments as the best solution to an unexpected pregnancy may have their own bottom lines in mind, but they’re doing their employees and themselves a disservice,” Harle writes. “Though helping women flourish as professionals and mothers may seem more expensive in the short term, in the long term, it is crucial to fostering the kind of happy, healthy work culture on which any organization thrives.”

Throughout her piece, Harle urges companies—including non-profits—to consider the whole picture. That includes mental-health outcomes, employee retention, and the ability of an increasing number of companies to allow for flexible work arrangements that allow women to stay productive in the workplace while prioritizing their role as mothers.

Harle’s challenge to Corporate America includes a reference to an earlier piece by businessman and entrepreneur Peter Rex. Writing in Newsweek, Rex—who serves on the advisory council for Viewpoint Diversity Score—calls attention to the short-term thinking of companies pledging to fund employees’ abortions. 

Like Harle, Rex calls on his fellow CEOs to commit their resources to female employees who choose life for their children—including by placing them into adoptive homes.

“These businesses are ignoring the possibility that many employees may simply need a little more help to carry their baby to term. Instead of blindly paying people to end an unborn child's life, companies should consider paying them to welcome that life into the world.”

As reported at Forbes.com, less than 40 percent of companies surveyed by the Society for Human Resource Management offer paid leave for adoptions, with far fewer covering the travel costs that can particularly accumulate for out-of-state or international adoptions. That means many employees who choose to adopt children rather than abort them are disincentivized to do so by their own companies.  

Abortion is one of the most contentious issues in American society. Businesses have an ethical responsibility to respect customers, employees, and other stakeholders who hold a wide diversity of social viewpoints and perspectives. 

Instead of sending the de-humanizing, demeaning message to their female employees that they must choose between motherhood and success in the workplace, companies should do everything they can to help employees welcome new life into the world. 

Countering Corporate America's De-Humanizing Message to Expectant Mothers

These days, it isn’t difficult to find a critic of so-called “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” employee training programs, which are too often rife with fundamentally divisive concepts like Critical Race Theory. What is in short supply, however, are solid alternatives.

That’s what makes resources like Dr. Carol Swain’s Real Unity Training Solutions so valuable. As Alliance Defending Freedom Director of Strategic Campaigns and Initiatives Jay Hobbs writes at The Federalist, the long-time academic’s latest project is designed as a positive antidote to a corrosive approach that has made its way into virtually every institution in American life.

“The current diversity training makes people feel miserable. Everyone’s miserable at the end of the training. No one’s better off,” Swain says. “Instead, we can actually present people with a historical background of discrimination and the law, and then present them with positive principles and training that bring people together and educate them.”

Crafted for use in corporations, as well as churches and other groups, Swain’s material was recently adopted by the Tennessee Board of Education, marking a major step forward for the upstart venture. 

Along with focusing on what unites co-workers and fellow members of organizations rather than what divides them, Swain’s framework educates leaders on their legal duties under constitutional and civil rights laws.

As Hobbs points out, that approach is long overdue in Corporate America:

Far from the outlier in the DEI field, that incident fits within a much larger trend of companies trafficking in divisive concepts in their workforces. At least 78 percent of the 50 Fortune 1000 companies evaluated on the Viewpoint Diversity Score 2022 Business Index utilize employee training that undermines trust, respect, and openness in the workplace. One of those companies, Bank of America, has launched a reeducation program, telling employees they needed to be “woke” and white employees to “decolonize your mind.”

On its website, Bank of America declares that, “Now more than ever, we need to be comfortable with uncomfortable conversations and deepen our understanding through self-education of people’s differences.” These “uncomfortable” discussions include telling all white employees that their lives are based on “white-skin privileges.”

You can also access Dr. Swain’s training materials here.

Carol Swain’s Plan to Eclipse “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” with Real Unity

Typically, when we hear about current censorship issues, we think of instances of blackballing on social media, such as Twitter banning public figures from the platform or Facebook preventing users from sharing certain points of view. 

But today’s increasing censorship problem encompasses so much more than that, and likely runs deeper than you know. Tech giants are controlling what you say and the news you see, but now even major financial institutions are under pressure to prevent companies and even individuals from accessing banking services based on the customer’s viewpoint. 

In a new Freedom Matters video about the threat of corporate censorship, Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel and Senior Vice President of Corporate Engagement Jeremy Tedesco uses JPMorgan Chase Bank as an example. Last fall, the bank denied payment processing services to the conservative group Defense of Liberty, citing a vague terms of use policy.

“Although JP Morgan apologized and reversed course, we shouldn’t be duped,” says Tedesco. “We’ve seen this same tactic from social media companies: Apologize for censorship until you think you can get away with it, then stop apologizing.” 

America’s biggest companies are violating free speech and trying to control what you say. That’s why the Viewpoint Diversity Score Business Index was created: to help companies get back on the right track and help you assess how companies are undermining free speech and religious freedom. Household company names such as Amazon, GoDaddy, and Chase Bank are providing essential services to millions of Americans every day—and in many cases, leveraging their power and resources to push forward an ideological agenda. 

Unfortunately, Fortune 1000 companies have caved to the demands of activists on the left who want to use these companies to bypass federal and local governments in enforcing their social and political agenda. Our 2022 Business Index results are concerning: of the 50 benchmarked Fortune 1000 companies, computer software companies scored an average of 6%; internet and retailing averaged 8%; companies in financial and data services industry came in at 11%.  

In a follow up conversation on corporate cancel culture, Tedesco spoke about the problem further, explaining just how entrenched Fortune 1000 companies are in practices that threaten free speech and religious freedom. 

 “The idea behind the Index is to first shed light on the problem,” he said, “but then to ultimately engage with these companies, give them model policies and practices, and to urge them to make changes that ultimately will make them institutions that protect and preserve these essential freedoms rather than be institutions that tear them down—which is where they’re headed right now.” 

Learn more about how you can use the Business Index to engage with these companies and advocate for freedom in Corporate America. 

Freedom Matters: Tedesco on Corporate Censorship, Debanking

Louisiana State Treasurer John Schroder made major news this week, announcing his state’s full withdrawal from BlackRock-managed funds. Louisiana becomes the fourth state—following Utah, Arkansas, and Texas—to redirect state investments away from the giant’s $8 trillion portfolio. 

Although the impending divestment of Louisiana’s $794 million by the end of 2022 won’t make an immediate dent in BlackRock’s bottom line, Schroder’s action plants an important flag in the growing (and bipartisan) backlash against investing strategies that prioritize political aims over fiduciary responsibility.

In a scathing letter to BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, Schroder stated his case for why he is no longer willing to risk Louisiana’s future. 

“This divestment is necessary to protect Louisiana from actions and policies that would actively seek to hamstring our fossil fuel sector,” Schroder wrote. “In my opinion, your support of ESG investing is inconsistent with the best economic interests and values of Louisiana. I cannot support an institution that would deny our state the benefit of one of its most robust assets. Simply put, we cannot be party to the crippling of our own economy.”

Schroder, whose state is one of the nation’s top oil and natural gas producers, highlighted that fact throughout the letter, contrasting the importance of Louisiana’s fossil fuel industries with BlackRock’s public goal of replacing oil and natural gas with green energy. 

Not only do those long-term goals conflict, jeopardizing Louisiana’s future, BlackRock’s strategy is also resulting in major financial losses—including a $1.7 trillion loss in a six-month period of time that prompted a July 2022 Bloomberg article titled, “BlackRock Is Breaking the Wrong Kind of Records.”

Along with citing the legal concerns involved in sacrificing state employees’ long-term financial returns for an ideological agenda, Schroder also called out BlackRock for making an end-run around the political process to impose large-scale cultural changes.

“I’m convinced that ESG investing is more than bad business; it’s a threat to our founding principles: democracy, economic freedom, and individual liberty,” Schroder wrote. “It threatens our democracy, bypasses the ballot box and allows large investment firms to push political agendas. It threatens our economic freedom because these firms use their massive shareholdings to compel CEOs to put political motivations above a company’s profits and investors’ returns. 

“Finally, it threatens our personal liberty because these firms are using our money to push their agendas contrary to the best interests of the people whose money they are using! There is a difference between offering an ESG investment option for those investors so inclined, and using other peoples’ non-ESG investments to promote ESG shareholder initiatives.”

Along with pushback at the state level, ESG investing is encountering opposition from advocacy groups, shareholders, and center-left media outlets. 

In August, Viewpoint Diversity Score (VDS) advisory council member and Inspire Investing CEO Robert Netzly announced his firm was abandoning its years-long strategy to salvage the terminology under its “faith-based ESG” label. Fellow VDS advisory council member Jerry Bowyer, chief economist of Vident Financial and the editor of Townhall Finance recently observed the decline of ESG’s once-unquestioned reputation among cultural elites, noting that even Tesla executives and shareholders are now rejecting the approach.

Meanwhile the Heritage Foundation is also pushing back with its newly launched “ESG Hurts” campaign, which “provides background information on the dangers of ESG through written material, graphics, and a commercial,” along with “model state legislation for state lawmakers looking to protect state pensions, investments, and contracts.”

And it’s not just conservatives who are pushing back on ESG. Earlier this summer, The Economist ran a lengthy piece concluding that, “the term ESG should be scrapped” in favor of better-defined metrics that don’t make the mistake of “lump[ing] together a dizzying array of objectives.”

Especially in light of the latest stand from Schroder and Louisiana, it will be interesting to see which state or major player in the investing world is next to oppose ESG. What’s clear enough is they won’t be the last.

Louisiana’s BlackRock Divestment Sends Warning Shot to ESG Investing

On Sept. 16, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit upheld a Texas law that prohibits social media companies with 50 million or more users from censoring content. 

In NetChoice v. Paxton, the court affirmed a Texas law that prevents large social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube from denying services or removing content based on the users’ viewpoint. It also requires the platforms to be more transparent by doing things like posting their terms of service, publishing transparency reports, and explaining why they deny service to any user. 

While the law in question seems destined for the U.S. Supreme Court—particularly since the decision conflicts with a recent Eleventh Circuit ruling—its underlying aims are straightforward: Companies holding themselves out as viewpoint-neutral platforms for speech owe it to their users to deliver on that basic promise.

There’s no question that Big Tech platforms are failing in the very areas the Texas law seeks to address. Measured on this year’s Viewpoint Diversity Score Business Index, Twitter, Meta (Facebook, Instagram), and Alphabet (Google, YouTube) scored in single-digits out of a possible 100 percent score. 

In a recent analysis of Alphabet, we noted a common theme that the Texas law (HB20) seeks to address as well:

Policies like Alphabet’s undermine a culture of free speech, where dissenting voices are allowed and even encouraged to challenge views held by those in power. That not only means scrubbing existing content from the digital public square, but also chilling speech from those who may be more hesitant to challenge entrenched orthodoxies when such challenges to the status quo are regarded as “hateful” or “objectionable.”

And the censorship doesn’t end with Alphabet’s internal policy. The Biden administration has shown a brazen willingness to pressure Big Tech companies—including Alphabet—to purge opinions from their platforms that public officials arbitrarily deem “disinformation.” Unfortunately, not one of the 50 companies on the 2022 Business Index confirmed that they disclose government requests to censor or restrict services to their shareholders or the public, which raises serious questions about the future of free speech in the digital marketplace of ideas.

In challenging HB20, the platforms argued that they have a First Amendment right to remove whatever content and ban whichever users they want. The Fifth Circuit squarely rejected this in a 90-page opinion, where it emphasized that the law “does not chill speech; instead, it chills censorship.” A concurring judge went on to call the platforms’ argument “ludicrous,” emphasizing that preventing censorship is, in fact, a “pro-speech, not anti-free speech result.” 

Notably, the Fifth Circuit also appeared to agree with a line of reasoning recently advocated by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, which views the platforms as “common carriers” more akin to telephone companies and the post office than as publishers with discretionary authority over what runs in their publication. Since Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube hold themselves out as viewpoint-neutral and provide essential services to the public, they are “common carriers” and therefore have a “duty to serve without discrimination.” 

As we previously pointed out, the Fifth Circuit openly parted ways with the Eleventh Circuit, which earlier this year ruled in favor of the social media companies in their challenge to a similar law in Florida, setting up what could be a Supreme Court showdown. 

While it remains to be seen how the Supreme Court will come down on the important First Amendment questions raised by these cases, there is one place both circuit courts agree: Laws requiring more transparency from social media companies are fair game. And this should not be a surprise. As former Supreme Court Justice Brandeis once said, sunlight is the best disinfectant.

In fact, the Fifth Circuit unanimously upheld the portion of the Texas law requiring platforms to be more transparent. Both courts upheld requirements requiring the platforms to disclose any terms of service that can be used to restrict or deny account services, and to make publicly available high-level statistics about their content moderation to ensure that they are not censoring users based on viewpoint. The Fifth Circuit also upheld a requirement for the platforms to explain why a user is being denied service. 

Again, these are basic expectations for companies that bill themselves as hubs for free speech and open dialogue. And companies don’t need to wait for a court ruling to adopt and enforce policies that, for example, prevent viewpoint-based discrimination in their product or service offerings, or ensure that their products and services aren’t conditioned or restricted on whether users agree with a particular viewpoint on any number of hot-button cultural issues. 

These reforms are important; social media companies are the gatekeepers for the modern public square. Providing greater transparency ensures that social media companies are accountable for how they approach content moderation and empowers users to make more informed decisions about their social media providers. It also lays bare any viewpoint discrimination that may occur.

Transparency is an important step toward building a digital public square that respects diverse views and beliefs. Social media platforms need not wait for courts and legislatures to impose disclosure requirements – they can and should voluntarily adopt policies like these to protect free speech on their platforms. 

Appeals Court Affirms Transparency Requirements, Says Social Media Companies Can't Use First Amendment to Justify Censorship

It’s always risky for businesses to veer out of their lane and into contentious political and social issues. But what happened recently in Boise, Idaho took this truth to a whole different level.

As the city’s 2022 Pride Festival, scheduled for Sept. 9-11, drew near, it became apparent that companies who had agreed to sponsor the event may have overlooked an extremely important detail. As the brochure indicates, some of the event’s activities were aimed at children, including, most prominently, an event called “Drag Kids on Stage,” which was marketed as “[a] drag show like none other, the Drag Kids range from ages 11-18….”

The scheduled sexualization and exploitation of children as young as 11 years old provoked enough opposition to persuade organizers to cancel that specific children’s event. Yet sadly it caused only three out of well over 100 sponsoring companies and organizations to pull their support.

By far the most consequential move came from Zions Bank, which announced it was withdrawing its $18,000 sponsorship, citing its surprise that some “of the event’s activities involve[e] children/minors.” In response to Zions’ claim that it did not know about minors’ involvement, event organizers said on social media that “[m]inors have participated in the Boise Pride Festival both on and off stage for many years.” 

But while Zions took action to distance itself, so far it is the only major company to do so. High-profile businesses that have maintained their support include grocery chain Albertsons—the lead sponsor for the festival—Mike’s Hard Lemonade, Blue Cross, Wells Fargo, T-Mobile, Target, Door Dash, Citibank, Columbia Bank, Intuit, Micron, Proctor & Gamble, Hewlett Packard, Amazon, AT&T, along with the cities of Boise and Meridian.

A publicly traded company with more than $90 billion in total assets, Zions put itself in a quintessential no-win situation by sponsoring the Boise event. In being forced to remove its sponsorship, the bank—which registered just 12 percent for its policies respecting free speech and religious liberty on the 2022 Business Index at ViewpointDiversityScore.com—isn’t likely to win itself any friends among the fringe radicals who support drag events aimed at children. 

On the other side of the coin, its high-profile decision to cut ties with the festival calls attention to the fact that it sponsored it in the first place—an especially bad look to social conservatives, including Latter-Day Saints, which have long-standing ties with the bank originally founded by Brigham Young.

Banks and other companies would be wise to learn from this incident. Sponsoring a community event inescapably attaches a company’s hard-earned reputation to the organizers’ goals, philosophy, and tactics. That makes thorough review a mandatory step before signing on as a sponsor. 

And as we’re seeing in Zions’ case, failing to do so not only risks alienating key stakeholders, it can also mean lending financial and reputational support to causes that sexualize and exploit children, striking at the very heart of basic morality and ethics. 

What C-Suite Leaders Can Learn from Zions Bank About-face at Boise Pride Festival

As part of an ongoing Viewpoint Diversity Score initiative, Alliance Defending Freedom and collaborating partner Inspire Investing recently invited 100 companies on the Fortune 1000 list to participate in the survey component of the upcoming 2023 Business Index.

Corporations have until Nov. 18 to respond to the survey. Many more of the over 40 total questions that comprise the index are scored partially based on company-provided disclosures.

Here are 75 of the companies that received the survey:

Companies Called Upon to Respond to Survey Portion of 2023 Business Index

The history of JP Morgan Chase is an interesting one. In many ways, to know the bank’s story is to know that of the nation.  Tracing its roots all the way back to 1799, when Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr both played a role in establishing what was then known as the Bank of the Manhattan Company, the bank can boast past account-holders as notable as Abraham Lincoln, who opened an account there in 1853.

A main funding source for both the Erie Canal (1817) and the Panama Canal (1904), by 1920, JPMorgan Chase was the world’s largest bank. An institution that has stood the test of time, the financial giant is still the largest bank in the U.S., with $3.31 trillion in assets and well over 270,000 employees on the payroll worldwide.

Yet, with so many millions of Americans depending on JPMorgan Chase, its shaky track record on respecting the diverse views of its staff, customers, and fellow citizens in recent years is especially alarming. In 2019, the bank famously buckled to fringe political interests by announcing it would “no longer bank the private prison industry,” and it initially denied payment processing services to mainstream GOP-affiliated group Defense of Liberty before backing down and allowing payments to process.

These actions not only signal a one-sided political allegiance and unnecessary risk alienating stakeholders, they raise much deeper questions about JPMorgan Chase’s commitment to fostering a culture that respects free speech, religious tolerance, and open discourse. 

Not surprisingly, those questions are further underscored by JPMorgan Chase’s 2022 Business Index score of just 15 percent overall. 

What went into JPMorgan Chase’s score? Let’s take a look.

The Market section of the Business Index measures corporate respect for customers’ and vendors’ freedom of expression and belief, as well as companies’ transparency around decisions to deny service. JPMorgan Chase scored a total of 15 percent in this category—a score that would automatically climb on next year’s Index if the company responds substantively to the survey component by Nov. 18, 2022.

However, there are at least two red flags in this category. First, the company’s terms of service include unclear or imprecise language—a recipe for the previously mentioned actions JPMorgan Chase took against Defense of Liberty. In particular, the company’s WePay terms of service include ambiguous prohibitions against accepting payments or using the service in connection with “hate…racial intolerance…or items or activities that encourage, promote, facilitate, or instruct others regarding the same.” 

The policy’s vague and ambiguous language  (namely “hate” and “racial intolerance”) was cited by the company  as its rationale to  de-bank Defense of Liberty— just ahead of an event featuring Cecilia S. Johnson, National Director of Black Engagement for the RNC. 

As JPMorgan Chase explained at the time, “Per our terms of service, we are unable to process for hate, violence, racial intolerance, terrorism, the financial exploitation of a crime, or items or activities that encourage, promote, facilitate, or instruct others regarding the same.” Shortly after news outlets covered the story, JPMorgan Chase reversed its decision, but did nothing to correct its policy. 

In order to avoid future incidents like this, and to protect the freedom of its customers, JPMorgan Chase should eliminate unclear or imprecise terms. It can do so by referencing the Viewpoint Diversity Score resource designed specifically for that purpose. 

[Find our resource on the risk of unclear or imprecise terms in products or service policies here.]

A second red flag on the Market section for JPMorgan Chase is its onerous third-party vendor policy, which mandates that all suppliers adopt and make available diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) policies and training programs. The not-so-subtle message embedded in the policy is that every JPMorgan Chase vendor can only maintain their contract with the bank so long as the bank approves of its DE&I programming.

While it is reasonable to expect third parties to comply with laws and act ethically, mandatory DE&I requirements go too far by forcing stakeholders to embrace a one size fits all approach to politicized social topics that may be incompatible with their diverse values, needs, missions, and philosophies. This top-down approach risks limiting the pool of potential vendors, suppliers, and contractors able to meet the needs of large corporate clients, hinders the equal opportunity of some third-party businesses to compete for corporate contracts, and undermines democratic pluralism in the wider marketplace.

Instead of compelling vendors, suppliers, and contractors to adopt any one particular view or approach to “diversity” in the workforce, companies should respect the freedom of third parties to make these important decisions consistent with their values and cultures. 

Companies—including JPMorgan Chase—looking to correct this mistake can find a valuable resource to do so here.

As with its vendor-facing policy, JPMorgan Chase draws on Critical Race Theory-inspired categories of “oppressor” and “oppressed” in its mandatory DE&I training for employees. Regardless of the intentions of corporate leaders who implement the training, the effect of this approach is to divide, rather than unite, employees.

Consider, for example, the following excerpt from a blog post at JPMorgan Chase, “Why I'm Helping People Fight Their Biases.” 

Bias is generally not visible to people who don’t suffer it. As a white male in a business dominated by other white males, you don’t see it unless you actively go and look for it.

Bias and discrimination are certainly antithetical to workplace unity. But confronting these realities where they still exist should never include the inherently divisive idea that a large swath of employees harbor undetected animus against their co-workers because of their sex or skin color. 

[Find alternatives to divisive DE&I training materials under “Toolkits” here.]

But adopting misguided DE&I policies is only one reason JPMorgan Chase scored just 10 percent in the workplace section of the 2022 Business Index. The company has very little to show for itself when it comes to respecting religious and ideological diversity in the workplace. 

For instance, although it sponsors myriad employee resource groups (ERGs), JPMorgan Chase does not recognize even one faith-specific ERG. That deprives employees with deep religious convictions of the ability to speak to company leadership in an organized, productive way, cutting out an essential component of a diverse workforce that could otherwise fuel innovation and foster a truly inclusive workplace.

JPMorgan Chase could immediately improve its workplace score by not only correcting these shortcomings, but by adopting an overarching policy that affirms a commitment to viewpoint diversity within the workforce. Additionally, the firm should make clear to employees that they are free during off-work hours to express and peaceably live according to their own religious and political beliefs without fear of punishment in the workplace.

JPMorgan Chase earned a 25 percent score on the public square section of the Index. Less than 45 percent of the company’s political spending supports members of Congress and U.S. Senators with negative legislative records on free speech and religious liberty, and it has kept its nose clean by refraining from joining litigation efforts to curtail the civil rights of people of faith. 

However, JPMorgan Chase has joined the Human Rights Campaign’s “Business Coalition for the Equality Act.” The so-called “Equality Act” is legislation that seeks to elevate sexual orientation and gender identity to the same level of race, color, religion, sex, and national origin in federal law. This proposal poses a deliberate and substantial threat to free speech, religious freedom, and the progress that women have made toward true equal treatment under the law.

In practice, the Equality Act would coerce people who willingly serve everyone to promote messages and celebrate events that conflict with their beliefs. It would harm equal treatment of women by forcing them to compete against men in their own athletic events and share private spaces with people of the opposite sex. And it would harm religious freedom by coercing uniformity of thought and speech on marriage, sex, and what it means to be male and female.

JPMorgan Chase has no business leveraging the assets of its highly diverse customer base to advance such an extreme political agenda. It also has no business donating to activist groups on the political fringe, such as the highly discredited Southern Poverty Law Center and the increasingly disreputable Anti-Defamation League. Yet, in 2017, the corporation doled out $500K each to these groups - despite the work those groups have done to aid and abet cancel culture. 

Banking should not be a partisan pursuit. Yet JPMorgan Chase has shown a troubling willingness to condition its services on adherence to a political ideology—and one that is growing increasingly radical. As it seeks to correct some of the more egregious issues mentioned throughout this analysis, the banking giant would also be well-served to participate in the survey portion of the 2023 Business Index—due Nov. 18, 2022—which provides valuable transparency on the key issues of free speech and religious freedom. 

Is the movement that has staked some of its most lofty promises—and threats—on its self-styled reputation as the chief enemy of fossil fuel now running out of gas? Judging by the response to a slew of politically charged ESG (environmental, social, governance) proposals at an annual Tesla meeting, the answer seems to be yes.

In his recent WORLD magazine column, Jerry Bowyer points to the meeting as an example of how the tide is turning on ESG, which for years has dominated corporate board rooms desperate to appease far-left activists whose radical social and political engineering goals are often smuggled in under the ESG umbrella. Companies went along with ESG because they believed that doing so was good risk management. But ESG’s politicized agenda has created its own bevy of risks that companies ought to avoid.

“Things have gotten so bad that it’s not just the populist right who are alienated. They’ve alienated some pretty close former allies, such as Tesla, Inc.,” writes Bowyer, chief economist of Vident Financial and the editor of Townhall Finance. “The green giant of the industry had been an ESG colossus until founder Elon Musk failed to keep pace with the inevitable march of history and came out of the closet as a ‘free speech absolutist’ and defender of the underdog.”

Bowyer, who serves on the advisory council for Viewpoint Diversity Score, puts it bluntly: “If they’ve lost Tesla, they’ve lost.”

The piece from Bowyer comes just days after Inspire Investing CEO and fellow Viewpoint Diversity Score advisory council member Robert Netzly announced his firm was abandoning its years-long strategy to salvage the terminology under its “faith-based ESG” label. 

And it’s not just conservatives who are pushing back on ESG. Earlier this summer, The Economist ran a lengthy, scathing piece concluding that, “the term ESG should be scrapped” in favor of better-defined metrics that don’t make the mistake of “lump[ing] together a dizzying array of objectives.”

“[The] controversy is now so undeniable that the ESG industry is lashing back at the backlash. As You Sow, one of the non-profit clearinghouses for the industry, posted a quote on social media acknowledging that ‘the acronym ESG as a construct may have lost some of its luster’ and has been explaining to the shrinking faithful that the reason ‘why there’s been such a backlash against ESG’ is that it is ‘extremely effective.’ So, the new party line is basically this: ‘We’re losing so much because we win so much.’ The unspun version of that ideology pushed the movement beyond the investing public’s toleration point, and the shareholders and the voters are correcting the balance.”

Bowyer: Opposition to ESG Investing Grows as Promises Fall Flat

Last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reminded us that corporate executives invite legal trouble when they treat employees’ sincerely held religious convictions with callous indifference. 

In Sambrano v. United Airlines, judges sided with United Airlines employees who found themselves on indefinite unpaid leave despite applying for and receiving religious exemptions from a companywide COVID-19 vaccine mandate. 

Previously a trial court had ruled in the company’s favor, but that decision was reversed by the Fifth Circuit, which then declined a request to rehear its decision. Judge James Ho wrote a concurrence explaining why.

This case is not about COVID-19 vaccines. It is about United executives forcing their political views about COVID-19 vaccines onto their employees. In 2021 and in response to President Biden’s executive order, United Airlines required all of its employees to get a COVID-19 vaccine or to request a religious or medical exemption. But employees who were granted an exemption were granted the “accommodation” of being put on unpaid leave indefinitely. 

United could have allowed employees to continue working while following mask and distancing guidelines and submitting to regular testing. Virtually every other major airline— including Southwest, American, Frontier, and Delta—did so. But United opted to take a far less tolerant approach. 

The company did not even try to justify its decision. There was no evidence that it would have reduced the spread of COVID. The risk of catching COVID on United planes is “infinitesimally low, with or without the vaccine,” and “some 99% of United’s employees were already vaccinated,” the Fifth Circuit remarked. 

Instead, the evidence showed that, “United’s CEO deliberately set out to coerce employees with religious scruples against the vaccine into violating those beliefs.” Both the trial court and Fifth Circuit were, “disturbed by United’s seemingly calloused approach to its employees’ deeply personal concerns with injecting a foreign substance into their bodies.”

United demanded that its employees choose between their deepest religious convictions and feeding their family. So, these employees sued under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and asked the court for immediate relief. Even as the trial court denied immediate relief, it acknowledged that if the government, and not United, was inflicting that harm, then the injury would deserve immediate relief and be, in legal terminology, “irreparable.”

At the Fifth Circuit, Judge Ho did not mince words: “How much money would it take for you to sell out your faith? To ask the question is to answer it. It seems obvious that violations of conscience are classic irreparable injuries.” Courts readily recognize this in the First Amendment context, when the government is encroaching on fundamental freedoms. But since it was United that was infringing on religious freedom rather than the government, the district court let the airline off the hook. The Fifth Circuit quickly reversed because, as Judge Ho explained: “it seems obvious that the reason that First Amendment injuries are irreparable is not because [they are] inflicted by the government rather than business. It’s because the very nature of religious belief is spiritual...”

Now that the Fifth Circuit decided that plaintiffs can obtain immediate relief for this type of harm, the trial court must determine whether the employees are likely to win on their Title VII and ADA claims. There is reason for optimism: the trial court stated in its initial ruling that, “Plaintiffs’ arguments appear compelling and convincing at this stage.”

But while the final outcome of the case remains to be seen, c-suite leaders and others don’t need to wait around for a final decision to know that respecting employees who hold a diverse set of beliefs and convictions is the right thing to do.  

And judging from the findings on the Viewpoint Diversity Score 2022 Business Index, corporations have a long way to go in that department. The 50 publicly traded Fortune 1000 companies evaluated scored an average of just 10 percent on the Workplace section, indicating a major fault line between c-suite executives and rank-and-file employees. 

Judge Ho’s concurrence highlighted the same phenomenon: 

Historically, corporations typically focus on increasing shareholder value—not on imposing certain cultural values on others. But that is rapidly changing.

I began by imagining a hypothetical employer who doesn’t care how productive an employee you might be—he insists that you abandon certain religious beliefs he finds offensive, whether it’s abortion, marriage, sexuality, gender, or something else. 

But here’s the thing: What was once hypothetical is now rapidly becoming reality.

This case is a perfect example of why, from a legal perspective, businesses should resist calls for ideological conformity. As John Siverling, President and Director of Private Markets and Impact Advocacy for OneAscent, recently wrote, there’s also a distinct business risk associated with a lack of viewpoint diversity.

Forcing employees to toe the line—even when it conflicts with their deeply held beliefs—not only stifles free thinking and religious freedom in the workplace, but as United is fast discovering, can lead corporate leaders into unwanted legal minefields.

Other company leaders would be wise to learn the lesson from United and the Fifth Circuit before they find themselves facing similar consequences.

United Airlines Wades into Legal Trouble after Forcing Employees to Choose Between their Faith and Their Job

In an age where social activism often reigns supreme, a growing number of companies conduct themselves as though they have a duty to use their resources and brand to secure particular political outcomes on contentious social issues.  

These corporations seem to assume that businesses have everything to gain and little if anything to lose by engaging in divisive social and political causes. For years, businesses have taken it as a given that failure to accede to the demands of far-left activists will result in significant fallout – whether through campaigns, political scrutiny, or boycotts – while such concessions hardly register any pushback from companies’ ideologically conservative customers, shareholders, and employees. But that dynamic is changing. 

A recent article in Newsweek explores this trend, exposing the cracks in old assumptions about the perceived non-engagement of those on the right. Valentin Haddad, assistant professor at UCLA Anderson School of Management and research fellow for the National Bureau of Economic Research, points out that while “[t]he initial stage of corporate activism is coming from the left … now there's pushback from the right.” 

Haddad suggests that the real question is whether “companies (are) gaining more from the left or losing more from the right?” 

Some say yes, corporate politicking benefits companies overall. For instance, Kirk Snyder, a professor at USC’s Marshall School of Business, proposed that “[c]ompanies wading into politics provides an opportunity to further define its values and what it stands for.” 

But Vanessa Burbano of Columbia University suggests in her 2021 research that corporations may in fact have little to gain and much to lose by following the herd and taking a stance on a hot-button issue:

Among [the study’s] conclusions, Burbano says: "Employees who disagree with a political stance taken by their companies are demotivated—they do less extra work and do lower quality work." On the flip side, "Those who agree with a political stance taken by their companies are not motivated—they behave no statistically differently than a control group." There's similarly a downside in regard to wooing consumers, as they are likely to boycott over a political position they don't like but are not likely to "buycott" over stances they agree with. 

It's one thing for a company to risk alienating employees and customers who disagree with their controversial stands, if the harms of doing so are outweighed by overall gains in employee engagement, productivity, and customer loyalty. But that calculation only works if the second half of that bargain holds up—which, according to Burbano, is doubtful at best.

The same holds true for shareholders. A recent poll by Echelon on behalf of The Daily Wire found that 58 percent of shareholders (in addition to 53 percent of consumers) said they don’t want companies weaving political agendas into their businesses.

Corporate political activism has the added danger of enforcing a kind of ideological homogeneity on its workforce. Taking sides on controversial issues risks compromising the values of religious and ideologically diverse stakeholders. It creates barriers for employees with different beliefs about the causes in question from coming forward, sharing their opinions, and contributing to a culture of openness and accountability. As John Siverling, Director of Private Markets and Impact Advocacy for OneAscent, and President of OneAscent Capital, argues, companies who opt for ideological conformity on important issues are also sacrificing their long-term ability to innovate.

“In the field of business, it is within the very nature of capitalism and competitive markets that new ideas lead to innovation and change,” Siverling, who serves on the Viewpoint Diversity Score advisory council, writes. “Diversity in thoughts and ideas leads to understanding new customers and unmet need.”

The future of business is pluralism and diversity of thought—not conformity. Shareholders, customers, and employees agree. Companies have little to gain, and much to lose, by wading into hot-button political issues. Instead, they should respect the viewpoints of everyone—from the shop floor to the boardroom. 

Find out more about what your business can do to respect freedom of thought, speech, and religious exercise, at our Resources page. 

When Corporate America Dabbles in Divisive Politics, Who Wins?

As part of an ongoing Viewpoint Diversity Score initiative, Alliance Defending Freedom and collaborating partner Inspire Investing last week invited 100 companies on the Fortune 1000 list to participate in the survey component of the upcoming 2023 Business Index.

Corporations have until Nov. 18 to respond to the survey, which accounts for at least 21 index criteria. Many more of the over 40 total questions that comprise the index are scored partially based on company-provided disclosures.

“Leaders of corporations are quick to tout their transparency on a host of ESG issues and other politically motivated indexes produced by left-wing interest groups. We should all expect equal transparency from corporations when it comes to their respect for religious and viewpoint diversity,” said ADF Senior Counsel and Senior Vice President for Corporate Engagement Jeremy Tedesco. “These factors are important to every American no matter their political or religious beliefs—and that’s even more urgent when it comes to companies that control access to essential business services. Shareholders, employees, and consumers want to know whether corporations are providing impartial access to these services or becoming tools of cancel culture. Filling out this survey is an important step toward gaining that understanding.”

Survey questions explore topics such as respect and accommodation for employees with diverse ideological and religious beliefs, vendor and contractor policies, charitable giving policies, public advocacy practices on hot-button social issues, and more.

Released in May, the inaugural Business Index is the first comprehensive benchmark designed to measure corporate respect for religious and ideological diversity in the market, workplace, and public square. The index focuses on industries that have the greatest potential to impact free speech and religious freedom. These include industries that provide essential banking, payment processing, and cloud services, or that serve as platforms for third-party expression in the digital space.

Many of the companies are household names, like Meta (Facebook, Instagram, etc.), Twitter, and Bank of America. The current survey is also soliciting responses from Disney, Netflix, Lyft, Uber, Verizon, and Progressive Insurance, among new companies added to the list. Along with scoring companies, Viewpoint Diversity Score also provides them with workable solutions through model policies, research, toolkits, polling, and constructive dialogue.

“There are millions of shareholders, consumers, and employees who feel left behind by corporate America,” said Inspire Investing CEO Robert Netzly, whose Christian investing and financial technology firm informs investment decisions on billions of dollars around the globe. “Corporate leaders have a golden opportunity to reassure each of these key groups that they are doing their part to preserve the foundational freedoms that make a thriving marketplace possible.”

ADF, Inspire Investing Call on 100 Fortune 1000 Companies to be Transparent on Viewpoint Diversity

The Business Index is designed to rein in these threats and promote a business culture that respects customers and other stakeholders’ freedom of expression and belief, fosters viewpoint diversity in the workplace, and reflects a commitment to the underlying principles of American democracy.

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ADF, Inspire Investing Call on 100 Fortune 1000 Companies to be Transparent on Viewpoint Diversity