McDonald’s Is The Latest Corporation To Dial Back DEI Initiatives After Advocating Diversity

Which company will be next?

Fast-food giant McDonald’s is the newest company to announce moves that end some of their diversity practices, The Associated Press reported.

In a statement released on Jan. 6, Chairman and CEO Chris Kempczinski said the company is changing the “shifting legal landscape” following a 2023 controversial ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court that ruled against affirmative action. McDonald’s plans to retire targeted goals that achieve diversity at senior leadership levels. The team also intends to terminate a program that encourages suppliers to develop diversity training and increase the number of minority members represented in their leadership ranks.

Other changes include a pause in their “external surveys,” similar to other companies that are pushing back, including Lowe’s and Ford Motor Co. who suspended their participation in an annual survey by the Human Rights Campaign and a name change from McDonald’s diversity team to the Global Inclusion Team. According to CNN, the company said “this name change is more fitting for McDonald’s in light of our inclusion value and better aligns with this team’s work.”

A number of corporations terminated their diversity, equity and inclusion measures, including Harley-Davidson, Tractor Supply, Walmart and more. However, McDonald’s was once looked at as a model of upkeep policies after a slew of racial discrimination lawsuits from a group of former Black franchise owners in 2021 prompted a rise in diversity initiatives.

“As a world-leading brand that considers inclusion one of our core values, we will accept nothing less than real, measurable progress in our efforts to lead with empathy, treat people with dignity and respect, and seek out diverse points of view to drive better decision-making,” Kempczinski wrote in a LinkedIn post at the time.

But policies and pressures from the incoming Trump-Vance administration may be the reason behind the sudden change.

Some incoming cabinet members and elected officials have introduced policies that would threaten companies revenue and business practices if they keep DEI in place. Stephen Miller, Trump’s incoming deputy chief of policy, leads America First Legal, a group that has threatened to go after corporate DEI policies. During the summer of 2024, Vice President-elect JD Vance introduced a bill that will end DEI programs within the federal government realm.

But according to some diversity experts, the DEI changes aren’t going to have as much effect as people think. J. Danielle Carr, chief officer of inclusion at Lowenstein Sandler and president of the Association of Law Firm Diversity Professionals, says DEI isn’t being eliminated but more so just changing. “DEI isn’t going away. It’s just changing,” she said. With advanced research, her organization found that only 14 of the Fortune 500 companies made public changes to their DEI teams or programs in 2024.

Despite recent changes, McDonald’s celebrated the growth in leadership, supplier, and franchisee diversity in 2024 thanks to such previous diversity commitments. Thirty percent of the company’s U.S. employees were from underrepresented groups, while 78% gave McDonald’s a “positive” score during the employee pulse survey.