Home improvement retail chain Lowe’s is retreating from some of its diversity, equity and inclusion commitments after receiving word it would be the next target of a conservative activist’s campaign against companies that champion DEI.
The concessions include no longer participating in surveys for the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ+ advocacy group. Lowe’s will also combine its employee resource groups for diverse employees into one organization.
The company said it plans to narrow its focus to safe and affordable housing, disaster relief and skilled trades education, according to an internal memo Lowe’s shared with USA TODAY.
Robby Starbuck – whose boycotts of Tractor Supply, Harley-Davidson and John Deere have prompted those and other companies to curtail DEI programs – claimed credit for the pullback.
Starbuck said he reached out to Lowe’s last week. Lowe’s declined to comment.
“Our movement against wokeness is a force that companies simply cannot ignore,” Starbuck said in a statement to USA TODAY. “I’m a megaphone for normal people who are sick of having divisive social issues shoved down their throat at work.”
In a nation riven by cultural issues around race, gender and family, Starbuck belongs to a new wave of agitators pressuring corporate America to back off commitments to DEI, climate change and the gay and transgender community.
Emboldened by a Supreme Court decision last year banning affirmative action at the college level, conservative…
