Walmart, PayPal, Netflix and Alphabet Held Accountable By Conservative Shareholders

Washington, D.C. — Over the next 30 hours, shareholder activists with the National Center for Public Policy Research’s Free Enterprise Project (FEP) will present shareholder proposals at the annual meetings of four well-known corporations: Walmart, PayPal, Netflix and Alphabet.

At today’s Walmart meeting, FEP will request that the board explain why it refused to revise its Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives until anti-DEI activist Robby Starbuck threatened to publicly expose the company’s policies and practices. (Proposal 9)

“It was apparently not until Robby Starbuck threatened to expose offensive Walmart ‘wokeness’ that meaningful changes were made, and then within a matter of days,” FEP writes in its supporting statement. “In addition to concerns about the time it took Walmart to revise its DEI programs, a major concern for Walmart shareholders is that value-destroying DEI initiatives are merely being repackaged rather than eliminated. Corporate governance missteps revealed by the requested report would help prevent that recurrence.”

At today’s PayPal meeting, FEP will request that PayPal analyze the risks of its charitable contributions, as they may reflect discrimination against individuals based on their speech or religious exercise. (Proposal 5)

In its supporting statement for Proposal 5, FEP draws particular attention to PayPal’s partnerships with the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and Human Rights Campaign (HRC):

Groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center have been criticized across the political spectrum as “a partisan progressive hit operation” more interested in “bludgeon[ing] mainstream politically conservative opponents” than upholding civil rights. It uses its “Hate Map” to target many mainstream political and religious groups and individuals, including Moms for Liberty, and Dr. Ben Carson. It has also used its influence to get social media and tech companies, including PayPal, to adopt acceptable use policies that censor SPLC targets.

Similarly, the Human Rights Campaign has led coalitions calling on major social media platforms to censor “hate speech and harassment” that includes many mainstream views on parental rights and human sexuality.

At today’s Netflix meeting, FEP will ask the board to assess how the company’s affirmative action initiatives impact Netflix’s risks related to actual and perceived discrimination on the basis of protected categories under civil rights law. (Proposal 7)

Stefan Padfield

As he presents Proposal 7 today, Free Enterprise Project Executive Director Stefan Padfield will tell Netflix shareholders:

Netflix apparently continues to practice affirmative action in a variety of ways despite the fact that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the 2023 case of SFFA v. Harvard that discriminating on the basis of race in college admissions violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment and as a result, the legality of corporate affirmative action programs has been called into question, with thirteen Attorneys General warning that SFFA implicates corporate affirmative action programs…

Unfortunately, the most likely outcome here is that our proposal will be defeated by a combination of apparently biased and conflicted proxy advisers, asset managers and corporate executives — leaving what have been referred to as the “true” and “ultimate” owners of the company stuck with race and sex discrimination being conducted with their money in the name of “diversity” and “inclusion.”

At tomorrow’s meeting of Google parent company Alphabet, FEP will request that the board consider ending Alphabet’s participation in the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index (CEI). (Proposal 6)

In his presentation of Proposal 6 tomorrow, Padfield plans to say:

Many believe that HRC’s CEI functions like a social credit score for corporations, with the threat of a bad score being wielded by HRC against corporations to force them to do the political bidding of radical activists, including sowing gender confusion in youth, encouraging permanent surgical procedures on confused and vulnerable teens, and effectively eliminating girls’ and women’s sports and private spaces. This is likely why so many major corporations have recently severed ties with HRC…

Alphabet argues that its engagement with organizations does not necessarily reflect an endorsement of their agendas. However, in addition to cooperating with HRCs survey, Alphabet is also a Platinum Partner of HRC, which HRC proudly touts as evidence that Alphabet provides “generous support of the work of the Human Rights Campaign.”

…In opposing our proposal, Alphabet is defiantly refusing to even consider ending its participation in the CEI, which is all our proposal asks. In light of this, Alphabet should at least answer the following questions. First, what is a woman? Second, can a man become a woman simply by saying so? Third, can a child be born in the wrong body? Alphabet arguably breaches its duties to shareholders by supporting HRC as it does without having answered these questions.

FEP expects that all four of these proposals will be defeated by a wide margin, but argues that the final vote tallies will not reflect the will of the majority of individual shareholders.

Also, in addition to asking shareholders to support these four proposals, FEP has published complete voting scorecards for each of these companies as part of its Proxy Navigator voting guide.

About

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.

FEP, the original and premier opponent of the woke takeover of American corporate life, aims to push corporations to respect their fiduciary obligations and to stay out of political and social engineering. More information about this proposal can be found in FEP’s mobile and web app, ProxyNavigator.

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