TARGET CORPORATION | Report on Target's partnerships with, charitable contributions to, and other support for certain organisations at TARGET CORPORATION

Status
2.21% votes in favour
AGM date
Previous AGM date
Proposal number
8
Resolution details
Company ticker
TGT
Lead filer
National Center for Public Policy
Resolution ask
Report on or disclose
ESG theme
  • Governance
ESG sub-theme
  • Lobbying / political engagement
Type of vote
Shareholder proposal
Filer type
Shareholder
Company sector
Consumer Discretionary
Company HQ country
United States
Resolved clause
RESOLVED: Shareholders request that the Board conduct an evaluation and issue a report examining the risks to the financial sustainability and reputation of the Company arising from its partnerships with, charitable contributions to, and other support for divisive social and political organizations and causes – as illustrated particularly by its continued participation in and striving for high scores on the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index. The report, prepared at reasonable cost and excluding proprietary information and disclosure of anything that would constitute an admission of pending litigation, should be publicly disclosed on the Company’s website by the end of 2024.
Supporting statement
SUPPORTING STATEMENT: Recent events made clear that revenue, and therefore shareholder value, drop when companies engage in overtly partisan and divisive activism – especially the sort of LGBTQ activism that is demanded of companies by the Human Rights Campaign (HRC)’s Corporate Equality Index (CEI)1, which seeks to sow gender confusion in children, encourage the permanent genital mutilation of confused teens, effectively eliminate girls’ and women’s sports and bathrooms, and rollback longstanding religious liberties.



Following Bud Light’s embrace of such partisanship, its North American revenue fell $395 million from the year prior,2 roughly 10% of its revenue in the months following its leap into contentious activism.3 Disney stock fell 44% in 2022 – its worst performance in nearly 50 years – amid its decision to put extreme partisan agendas ahead of parental rights.4 And Target is no exception – its market cap fell over $15 billion amid backlash for similar actions.5



Target – which has paid partnerships with HRC6 and similar organizations like GLSEN7 and Out&Equal8 – disastrously engaged in such activism when it aggressively touted radical gender theory in its stores.9 The backlash that ensued hurt sales10 and the stock price11 significantly, which resulted in a $12 billion lawsuit against the Company12 and caused Target to be rated “high risk” on 1792 Exchange’s Corporate Bias Ratings.13



Was this damage to shareholder value a direct result of Target’s capitulation to the CEI criteria,14 which requires companies to market to the LGBTQ community in divisive ways? Does Target’s fulfillment of the CEI criteria requiring it to pay for employees’ gender transition surgeries15 open the Company up to liability from future detransitioner lawsuits?16



Target received a perfect score on the CEI from 2013-2022, which can only mean that it is spending shareholder assets to espouse and fund such divisive partisanship. Yet despite Target engaging in its most extreme activism to date, its CEI score in 2023 dropped for the first time in a decade, proving that no amount of Company-destroying activism will satisfy the insatiable appetite of HRC and its allies.



The risks of participating in the CEI must be evaluated and considered by the Company out of its fiduciary duty to serve the interests of shareholders.

How other organisations have declared their voting intentions

Organisation nameDeclared voting intentionsRationale
Rothschild & co Asset ManagementAgainst
Kutxabank Gestion SGIIC SAU.Against
Anima SgrAgainstThe company already provides sufficient information regarding its corporate charitable contributions.

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