Apple shareholders voted down a measure on Tuesday to end the technology company’s diversity, equity, and inclusion program.
The world’s leading technology company rejected a proposal from the GOP-aligned National Center for Public Policy Research in a vote that broke with an increasingly anti-DEI trend set by a host of major U.S. corporations over the past year.
The news marked the second time in roughly four weeks that shareholders blocked a DEI overhaul. The vote came after Apple CEO Tim Cook defended his company’s DEI program, claiming it didn’t rely on race and gender quotas.
“We’ve never had quotas or targets for Apple. Our strength has always come from hiring the very best people and then providing a culture of collaboration,” Cook said during the meeting’s question-and-answer period.
“As the legal landscape around these issues evolves, we may need to make some changes to comply. But our North Star of dignity and respect for everyone, and our work to that end, will never waver,” Cook added.
Shareholders ultimately listened to Cook instead of Stephen Padfield, the executive director of the National Center for Public Policy Research’s Free Enterprise Project, who urged them to align with a clear “vibe shift.”
“DEI is out, and annual merit is in,” Padfield said before shareholders voted on Tuesday.
Meta, Google, Target, McDonald’s, Walmart, Lowe’s, John Deere, Tractor Supply, and Ford are among a slew of corporations that have backed away from DEI policies in recent months.
Padfield argued that Apple’s DEI program was out of compliance with court rulings and President Donald Trump’s executive orders targeting such initiatives.
Other major tech companies, such as Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, and Sundar Pichai’s Google, have pulled DEI programs over concerns they could violate new regulations.
“The way to think about this is we’re in the middle of a pretty rapidly changing policy and regulatory landscape that increasingly views any policy that might advantage any one group of people over another as something that is unlawful, and because of that, we need to adjust, or else we’ll just be out of alignment with what the law is saying,” Zuckerberg said in January, citing the 2023 decision from the Supreme Court striking down race-based affirmative action in higher education, a decision that held legal consequences for corporations hiring based on race.
Padfield’s group similarly argued that “the risks to Apple stemming from continuing to push these divisive and value-destroying agendas is only increasing in light of President Trump’s recent executive order focusing the Department of Justice on rooting out illegal discrimination being carried out in the name of DEI.”
“DEI poses litigation, reputational and financial risks to companies, and therefore financial risks to their shareholders, and therefore further risks to companies for not abiding by their fiduciary duties,” the National Center for Public Policy Research’s Free Enterprise Project’s proposal wrote.
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Apple’s Cook has maintained an amicable relationship with the Trump administration despite disagreements over DEI policy.
After doling out $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund and attending the 47th president’s swearing-in ceremony on Jan. 20, Cook met Trump last week, after which Apple announced a $500 billion investment in the United States through infrastructure, factories, and other facilities.