In an annual meeting for Disney shareholders last Thursday, March 20, investors overwhelmingly voted to turn down a proposal that would pull the company out of the Human Rights Campaign Foundation’s (HRC) Corporate Equality Index.

The HRC’s Corporate Equality Index (CEI) is the national benchmark for corporate policies, practices, and benefits pertinent to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer employees. The proposal was put forth by the right-wing think tank National Center for Public Policy Research through its Free Enterprise Project initiative. The Free Enterprise Project (FEP) calls itself “the original and premier opponent of the woke takeover of American corporate life.”

The proposal put forth by the FEP was determined to classify the series of “perfect scores” Disney received on the index since 2007, given by HRC, as an outright negative thing.

“When corporations take extreme positions, they destroy shareholder value by alienating large portions of their customers and investors. This proposal provides Disney with an opportunity to move back to neutral,” the FEP’s document read. The scores, the FEP expressed, could “only be attained by abiding by its partisan, divisive and increasingly radical criteria.”

Within the proposal, the FEP also took aim at trans-rights efforts, bringing up HRC and other organizations like it including The Trevor Project and GLAAD, claiming that they “seek to sow gender confusion in children, encourage irreversible surgical procedures on confused teens, effectively eliminate girls’ and women’s sports and bathrooms, and roll back longstanding religious liberties.” Using those examples, the FEP looped Disney into those claims, stating that “Disney disastrously engaged in such activism when it inserted itself in the middle of a divisive public debate over the Parental Rights in Education Act,” referring to Disney’s opposition to Florida’s dubbed “Don’t Say Gay” law in 2022.

Thankfully, the investors did not share the FEP’s opinion on the matter. In a statement opposing the proposal, the board said: “Given the Company’s existing practices to assess participation in transparency efforts and the Board’s oversight of ESG [environmental, social and governance] reporting, workforce equity matters and human rights policies, we do not believe this proposal would provide additional value to shareholders.”

In a statement, Eric Bloem, VP of corporate citizenship at the Human Rights Campaign Foundation, shared HRC’s approval of the resulting outcome. “This vote gives us a clear statement of values from Disney’s shareholders,” Bloem wrote. “They know what we know; that despite all the noise, commitments to inclusion pay figurative dividends and help their literal bottom line.”

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