Wall Street shareholders aren’t interested in corporate moves to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, the 2026 proxy voting season is showing.
Anti-DEI shareholder proposals were rejected by about 99% during the spring proxy voting period. Proxy season is the time, usually between April and June, when public companies hold annual meetings and shareholders vote on issues that affect how those companies are run. Most investors do not attend the meetings in person; they vote by proxy or send in their vote by mail.
Andrew Behar, CEO of the nonprofit shareholder advocacy group As You Sow, said the results from this proxy season give company boards a clear reason to keep lawful diversity programs in place: Shareholders are saying they want their companies to hire and promote from the widest possible pool of talent. Anti-DEI resolutions were defeated, Behar told the Amsterdam News, “And they have been just soundly, I mean, soundly defeated. We’ve not seen any get above a 98% vote against, so shareholders are sending a very strong message to corporations that we want you to continue to have a diverse workforce.”
This year, according to the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance, conservative groups filed 43 anti-DEI resolutions through May 31. Of the 22 anti-DEI resolutions that had been voted on by then, support averaged only about 1%. Visa shareholders gave an inclusion audit proposal 0.9% support. Intuit shareholders gave a diversity return-on-investment proposal 0.8% support. At Deere, Disney, Starbucks, Adobe, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and First Citizens BancShares, comparable proposals received between 0.4% and 0.9% of the votes. None received enough support to be brought back to the same companies with the same requests.
There was a similar outcome in 2025. Advocates said this repeated vote against conservative proposals shows that many investors view diverse, merit-based workforces as good for business. Companies like John Deere, the agricultural machinery company, also pushed back, saying a diverse workforce helps meet customer needs, supports innovation, and contributes to long-term success.
Corporate DEI programs are currently still legal. The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2023 decision ending race-conscious admissions at colleges and universities does not affect businesses.
In 2018, As You Sow started pressing companies to share more information about their workforces: who was being hired, who was being promoted, who stayed, and whether diversity promises were producing results. The group used EEO-1 data, which many large employers already report to the federal government, and created racial justice and DEI scorecards to compare company practices.
“We were one of the first groups that started to look at some of the data, and we were seeing this correlation, so we wrote a letter, and got it signed by [the representatives of] about $4 trillion worth of assets …,” Behar said. The investor coalition sent letters to 3,000 companies arguing that workforce data is important to investors and that they had a right to know if the composition of a company’s workforce helped or hurt its performance.
“The composition of your workforce is correlated to your financial performance. Therefore, it is material; therefore, you need to disclose that to shareholders,” Behar said. “At that point, very little disclosure was happening.”
Some companies responded by publishing their EEO-1 reports. As You Sow asked for more details about hiring, promotion, retention, pay equity, and leadership responsibility.
When companies would not provide enough information, As You Sow and other investors filed shareholder resolutions asking them to explain how workforce diversity affected the company, its culture, and its stakeholders.
“The ones who responded well, that was great. The ones who didn’t, we escalated by filing shareholder resolutions,” Behar said.
As You Sow’s 2023 “Capturing the Diversity Benefit” report, produced with Whistle Stop Capital, reviewed 4,970 EEO-1 forms from 1,641 publicly traded U.S. companies between 2016 and 2022. The report found that companies with more diverse managers saw stronger results in terms of growth, cash flow, profits, and return on invested capital. Behar said As You Sow’s next report, to be released this July, will expand the analysis.
“It’s nine years of data; it’s 1,676 publicly traded U.S. companies,” he said, “and it’s irrefutable. The first data point is that greater diversity leads to financial outperformance. Data point number two is that if you look at all-white management teams, they financially underperform across every single sector.”
As You Sow is also trying to use its research to help companies defend diversity programs. Behar said the group wants to use the data in court briefs and possibly in lawsuits against companies that drop diversity programs, even when evidence shows those programs boost their financial performance.
“They’ve got legal precedents now, and they’re threatening companies with lawsuits, so what we’re trying to do and the reason that we’re publishing this report, the one on July 23, is to try to give corporate boards the data that they need to make the case that what they’re actually doing is making a financial decision.” Behar said. “The reason that they want diversity is because they’re making a financial decision, and that is their fiduciary obligation.”
