Meta on Friday announced the company will end several diversity, equity and inclusion programs, becoming the latest in a string of companies to abandon similar commitments as conservative backlash toward DEI policies continues to grow, years after the diversity commitments made across corporate America amid anti-racism protests in 2020.

Costco has refused to back down from its DEI policies. The company's board of directors unanimously voted against a proposal brought by a conservative think tank, the National Center for Public Policy Research, that would have required Costco to re-evaluate its DEI policies. The board said it "believes that our commitment to an enterprise rooted in respect and inclusion is appropriate and necessary."

Diversity, equity and inclusion policies -- which can include employer-mandated diversity trainings, resource groups for underrepresented minorities and commitments to equity in hiring -- swept corporate America after the 2020 police killing of George Floyd. But recently, these programs have faced legal and political challenges and a wave of backlash from conservative critics and free speech advocates, who consider DEI policies racist and "woke." Billionaires Bill Ackman and Elon Musk are among the anti-DEI crusade's most outspoken advocates. Ackman became DEI's fiercest crusader last year when he pushed for the eventual resignation of former Harvard University President Claudine Gay after her remarks to Congress about antisemitism on campus following the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel were widely criticized. Ackman, in an essay slamming DEI, claimed he had learned Gay was hired through a Harvard presidential search process that primarily considered candidates who met certain diversity criteria, though a Harvard spokesman said DEI officers had no hiring authority. Many Republican-controlled state legislatures took action against DEI in 2024, with several states, including Alabama, Iowa and Utah banning DEI at public colleges and universities. The wave of conservative backlash against companies deemed "woke" picked up significant steam in 2023 when Bud Light became the target of a conservative boycott after it briefly collaborated with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney for a marketing promotion. The boycott tanked the beer brand's sales and unleashed a wave of smaller copycat boycotts against companies who engaged in marketing outreach to the LGBTQ communities or voiced commitments to DEI.

Robby Starbuck, a former music video director, has led the charge on social media against companies that are committed to DEI policies and has orchestrated public pressure campaigns to get companies to abandon these commitments. Several of the companies that have abandoned DEI policies in recent months were targeted by Starbuck, who encouraged his followers to boycott companies including John Deere, Harley-Davidson and Lowe's. Starbuck has claimed credit for these policy changes, stating in a post on X in November he had threatened to expose the "wokeness" at Walmart, but claimed he had "productive conversations" with the company that influenced its decision to scale back its DEI efforts. Starbuck again claimed credit for McDonald's rolling back its DEI policies, posting on X that he had told the company he would publish a "story on woke policies there" three days before it announced its DEI policy changes.

The Human Rights Campaign, whose Corporate Equality Index is a frequent casualty of the DEI policy rollbacks, criticized the anti-DEI crusade in its fall 2024 magazine as a "coordinated campaign led by the same actors who have been driving the wave of anti-LGBTQ+ legislative and legal attacks across the country." HRC called out Starbuck for "misrepresenting" the Equality Index as a "coercive tool forcing businesses to adopt 'woke' policies," instead clarifying it is a "voluntary, widely respected benchmark for LGBTQ+ workplace inclusion." Mark Cuban has frequently defended DEI, stating in April he believes "DEI is a positive because I see its impact on bottom lines," citing the hundreds of companies he invests in.

Some companies slashing their DEI programs have cited the Supreme Court's June 2023 decision, Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which ruled race-based affirmative action programs in college admissions violate the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.