18 May 2023 Conservative Shareholders Demand Home Depot Rescind Racist Racial Equity Audit

Washington, D.C. – Today, Scott Shepard – director of the National Center for Public Policy Research’s Free Enterprise Project (FEP) – presents a proposal at the Home Depot annual shareholder meeting that, if approved, requires the company’s board of directors to rescind the “2022 Racial Equity Audit” proposal and reject any discriminatory practices at the company.

Racial equity audits do not benefit the companies that conduct them. They are non-neutral evaluations designed to embarrass the companies who elect to conduct them, and there is no evidence to suggest that such audits increase shareholder value. The 2022 proposal essentially admits as much as the evidence cited for the audit focused on Home Depot’s philanthropic and political donations.

Scott Shepard

“In responding to the 2022 proposal, the executives and directors magnified their problems and risks by failing to use a neutral third-party auditor that embraces diversity and inclusion of thought and analysis,” said Shepard. “Such an auditor would include legal scholars and communities embracing wide views of equity-based discrimination, including that all Americans have the same civil rights as all other Americans – none can be discriminated against by race, ethnicity, sex or orientation, even if they belong to groups companies or woke activists deem ‘non-diverse.'”

“Instead, Home Depot’s third-party appears to have excluded analysts who believe, with the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, that ‘the way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discrimination on the basis of race'” added Shepard. “That’s also the position of the Fourteenth Amendment, which does not include a secret Section Six declaring that ‘all of the foregoing can be ignored if you’re discriminating in favor of groups you’ve honored with the label diverse.'”

Such an audit is far beyond Home Depot’s fiduciary responsibility that requires the company to make decisions to maximize the return on shareholders’ investment. To the extent that Home Depot hires, promotes or trains on the basis of any metrics other than merit, it violates its fiduciary duties.

Home Depot’s annual shareholder meeting will be held virtually on Thursday, May 18 at 9:00 AM ET.

The meeting can be accessed by clicking here.

View FEP’s Proposal 8 on page 37 of Home Depot’s proxy statement.

The National Center for Public Policy Research, founded in 1982, is a non-partisan, free-market, independent conservative think-tank. Ninety-four percent of its support comes from individuals, less than four percent from foundations and less than two percent from corporations. It receives over 350,000 individual contributions a year from over 60,000 active recent contributors. Contributions are tax-deductible and may be earmarked for the Free Enterprise Project. Sign up for email updates at https://nationalcenter.org/subscribe/.

Follow us on Twitter at @FreeEntProject and @NationalCenter for general announcements. To be alerted to upcoming media appearances by National Center staff, follow our media appearances Twitter account at @NCPPRMedia.