McDonald’s announced on Monday this it is terminating several of the company’s diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) practices, attributing the decision to a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that outlawed affirmative action in college admissions. The fast-food chain, which had previously aimed for 35% of its US leaders to come from underrepresented groups by 2025, will now focus on embedding inclusion practices into its operations rather than setting specific representational goals.
“Following the Supreme Court ruling in STUDENTS FOR FAIR ADMISSIONS, INC. v. PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE, we also assessed the shifting legal landscape to anticipate how this ruling may impact corporations such as McDonald’s,” McDonald’s executives wrote in a statement. “And finally, we benchmarked our approach to other companies who are also re-evaluating their own programs.”
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Additionally, McDonald’s is discontinuing its diversity training programs for suppliers and pausing participation in external surveys that measure workplace inclusivity, particularly for LGBTQ+ employees. The company has also renamed its diversity team to the ‘Global Inclusion Team’.
The decision reflects a broader trend among corporations, including Walmart, Jack Daniels, Ford, John Deere, and others that have scaled back their DEI initiatives in response to conservative backlash.
Activist Robby Starbuck has publicly pressured the company regarding its diversity policies, claiming to influence its recent changes.
“Companies can see that America wants sanity back. The era of wokeness is dying right in front of our eyes. The landscape of corporate America is quickly shifting to sanity and neutrality. We are the trend, not the anomaly anymore,” he posted on X. “We’re winning and one by one we WILL bring sanity back to corporate America.”
BIG news: @McDonalds is ending a number of woke DEI policies today. Now let me tell you what’s changing and how it happened.
3 days ago I told McDonald’s that I’d be doing a story on woke policies there. Today they’ve announced the following changes:
• Hiring: They will END… pic.twitter.com/bvFglf6pxw
— Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) January 6, 2025
However, McDonald’s maintains that it still prioritizes inclusion as a core value despite these rollbacks, emphasizing the integration of inclusion into business growth.
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