Google received a perfect score of 100 on the Human Rights Campaign (HRC)’s Corporate Equality Index (CEI),1 which can only be attained by abiding by its hyper-partisan, divisive and increasingly radical criteria.2



Though HRC claims that the CEI is just a “benchmarking tool on corporate policies... pertinent to LGBTQ employees,”3 in reality, it functions like a social credit score for corporations. The threat of a bad score is wielded by HRC against corporations to force them to do the political bidding of radical activists, which seek to sow gender confusion in youth, encourage permanent surgical procedures on confused and vulnerable teens, and effectively eliminate girls’ and women’s sports and bathrooms.



Receiving a perfect score on the CEI can only mean that Google – which has a paid platinum partnership with HRC4 – is spending shareholder assets to espouse and fund such divisive positions that risk shareholder value while being unrelated to the Company’s business.



Recent events have made clear that shareholder value drops when companies engage in the sort of activism that the CEI demands. Following Bud Light’s embrace of such divisiveness, its revenue fell $395 million in North America compared to a year prior.5 Target’s market cap fell over $15 billion amid backlash for similar actions.6 Disney stock fell 44% in 2022 – its worst performance in nearly 50 years – for putting divisive agendas ahead of parental rights.7 And more recently, Planet Fitness’ valuation dropped by $400 million in just five days for a similar controversy.8



This year, some companies finally learned from those mistakes by responding to these risks accordingly: Lowe’s, Ford, Harley Davidson, Jack Daniels, Tractor Supply and Walmart all ended their CEI participation.9



As the Board has a fiduciary duty to protect shareholders from unnecessary value-destroying risks, it should end Google’s participation in the CEI as well.