Over the past year, a growing number of corporate employers have shown signs of backing away from diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in the workplace, amid mounting social pressures and the risk of litigation from right-wing activists. President Trump’s recent executive orders—which explicitly threaten legal action against the private sector over “illegal DEI” practices—have only exacerbated those concerns, leading companies to take more forceful action or, at a minimum, reevaluate their diversity programs.
In a report released today by the research insights firm Gravity Research, nearly three-quarters of corporate executives claim that potential federal investigations into corporate DEI have been keeping them “up at night.” This sentiment was nearly universal across the finance sector, with 95% of leaders expressing those concerns—in line with reports that Wall Street firms have pared back their DEI initiatives over the last year.
“When we actually talk to our clients, there’s a lot of question marks around: ‘I thought we were legally compliant,’” says Gravity Research president Luke Hartig, noting that the group of employers surveyed includes Fortune 500 companies. “We don’t have a clear answer to that question just yet. However, the fact that 74% said that they fear federal investigations tells us that it’s at least creating a sense of fear and anxiety among these large companies, even if we’re still uncertain as to exactly how far this can go.”
The report also captures how many companies have responded to the executive orders and anti-DEI movement, with 64% saying they were redefining or rebranding their DEI functions—a common shift among employers that have altered their DEI programs recently. Many companies reported altering their public messaging on DEI: In 2025 alone, 66% of companies say they have cut back on the use of DEI terminology in their external communications. That can mean curtailing mentions of “equity” or the acronym DEI, opting instead for terms like “inclusion” and “belonging,” which might be less loaded.
“We know terminology matters, but the work is more important,” one executive explained as part of the survey. “We are striving to communicate in a way that won’t attract undue attention so we can protect the work versus having to defend the work with external actors.”
And yet, many companies are still worried about how their workers may react to these changes, with 60% of respondents saying they expected to see employees mobilize on political or social issues. In fact, the majority of respondents said they were “feeling pressure to make an internal statement reaffirming their commitment to inclusion and belonging,” according to Hartig, though only 28% have actually done so.
Despite all the pushback to corporate DEI—and the changes that have already been made at a number of companies—most of them are still not entirely culling their ranks. Gravity Research found that most employers were not eliminating C-suite DEI roles, though certain sectors were more likely to do so; this shift was especially evident in the consumer staples sector, where 20% of employers had made changes to C-suite DEI positions. Even prior to Trump’s executive orders, however, consumer companies and retailers have been particularly vulnerable to the DEI backlash, as evidenced by the response to conservative activist Robby Starbuck’s social media campaigns over the last year.
“When [we] talk to the chief diversity officer community, we definitely hear a lot of anxiety about the future of DEI-dedicated functions within companies,” Hartig says. “But certainly the research shows that they are not getting rid of it all together.”
As Fast Company has reported, plenty of companies have continued to stand their ground on DEI or have made minimal changes to protect against potential legal risks. That much is also clear from the report, which indicates that 80% of companies are “actively monitoring” anti-DEI laws and legal challenges, rather than taking immediate action. While a good share of employers have adopted semantic changes, their approach has been more conservative as it relates to cutting DEI programs. About half of respondents have revised DEI trainings, but few have taken more significant steps like cutting employee resource groups.
That said, a sizable portion of employers (34%) are now reconsidering their participation in the Human Rights Campaign’s annual survey measuring workplace inclusion for LGBTQ+ workers, which can be traced back to the anti-DEI campaign that Starbuck has waged across social media. Several major companies—including McDonald’s, Target, and Walmart—have already pulled out of the HRC survey in recent months.
As Hartig points out, moves like this appear to be motivated more by social pressure than by legal consequences. Gravity Research has found that even companies that have yet to bow out of the survey are now more reticent to advertise their scores publicly—which many employers have long used to send a signal to LGBTQ+ workers.
“At least from major companies, we’ve seen virtually no publicization of their HRC scores,” Hartig says. “This was something that companies previously touted and used as a sign of being an inclusive employer. Will that change as we get closer to Pride month? Will companies start to talk about that? Maybe. But it certainly reflects a broader movement from the corporate community.”
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