Slew of Minnesota companies beyond Target go mute on DEI

Target has been considered for years a national corporate leader in diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) practices — a position bolstered after its support of Black-owned businesses following the 2020 police murder of George Floyd.

So when the Minneapolis-based retailer announced last month it is pulling back on its diversity goals, Target was accused of political expediency, losing the trust of some Black activists who said the betrayal hurt more than other DEI pullbacks from companies such as Amazon, Google, Deere and McDonald’s.

Yet, Target is far from being the only Minnesota company stepping back on its public-facing DEI policies following President Donald Trump’s executive order that instructed federal agencies to identify private-sector entities to investigate over their diversity efforts.

3M wiped its website of prominent mentions of such policies — work lauded in diversity audits and held up as examples in national diversity training.

The Minnesota Star Tribune surveyed Minnesota’s largest public companies, and some offered general statements of diversity remaining valuable at the company. Others declined to comment. None of the surveyed companies offered a manager or executive to interview about the issue and few would confirm or deny whether specific policies or goals, previously trumpeted publicly, still exist.

Experts say the administration’s legal threat could result in real business consequences. 3M, for example, is a large defense supplier.

“This has created massive uncertainty for large private employers who want to avoid being on the list of worst offender, and therefore may abandon all things DEI,” said Aaron Goldstein, an attorney with Dorsey & Whitney.

Signs of the DEI pullback began appearing before Trump’s inauguration. For the past year, conservative activist investors and podcasters have chosen companies to hammer and threaten with lawsuits.

Many of those companies stepped up DEI efforts after employees and customers pressured them in 2020 to join a social movement after Floyd’s murder. The zeitgeist has slowly shifted in the other direction, said Goldstein, a partner in Dorsey’s labor and employment group.

“I’ve told my clients, the rock is now touching the hard place,” he said. “You’re going to face liability and risk no matter what you do.”

The Minnesota companies that did comment used the latest buzzwords such as “belonging” or simply “inclusion.”

And most public companies have decided not to participate in outside diversity surveys like one aggregated by the Human Rights Campaign. The Center for Economic Inclusion in St. Paul is mothballing two equity indexes because of lack of participation.

The worry for diversity consultants and activists is that DEI programs will be less effective without public disclosures.

Golden Valley-based General Mills spokeswoman Mollie Wulff acknowledged Trump’s executive orders might change how the company approaches DEI as it complies with rules for federal contractors.

“For many years, General Mills has emphasized the importance of a culture of belonging, which is part of our enterprise strategy and company values,” Wulff said in a statement. “In an ever-changing landscape, we continuously evolve to meet the needs of our business.”

Yohuru Williams, a University of St. Thomas professor and a DEI consultant, gave Target credit for acknowledging the pause of some goals.

“The fact that Target even took the step of saying we’re trying to figure out how to continue that work under this frame speaks to their acknowledgement that they know they were going to take a hit,” Williams said, “that people were going to be understandably upset because that pledge meant a lot.”

Most companies in Minnesota meet benchmarks set by national organizations like the Human Rights Campaign. Of Minnesota’s largest 15 public companies in 2024, only 3M and C.H. Robinson did not get the highest score on the index, which measures DEI policies through the lens of LGBTQ+ issues.

In the 2023 Center for Economic Inclusion index — which measured diversity efforts by Minnesota employers — 75% of the companies that participated had DEI programs led by top leadership. About 95% had DEI programs in their units, 73% of which had a budget.

The index pointed out 3M’s workforce supplier, global impact and executive pay policies. It pointed out Best Buy’s Racial Equity Leadership Immersion task force and progress in diversifying supply chains.

3M’s “Champions for Equitable Change” program was included in a diversity training curriculum developed by the WK Kellogg Foundation that is used across the country. By facilitating discussions, 3M’s program allows peers to have tough conversations and figure out how to advance each other at 3M.

Yet, sometime after Jan. 24 the Maplewood-based company removed links to “Science for Community” goals featuring social equity targets and cut the “S” from its ESG (environmental, social and governance) reporting, according to pages saved by the Internet Archive.

Before that, the company took down DEI reports published in recent years.

3M, which has federal government contracts worth up to $447 million, won’t say why.

But in its annual report released Feb. 5, the company said it has maintained gender pay parity “and is committed to continuing these efforts.”

In a statement, the company said it “continues to believe that bringing together people who have different backgrounds, experiences, industry knowledge and technical expertise strengthens our innovation for customers and is a catalyst for innovation and growth.”

Target, too, said it has a continued commitment to inclusion with its “Belonging at the Bullseye” program that it is “an essential part of our team and culture, helping fuel consumer relevance and business results.”

The Land O’Lakes farmers cooperative, a Fortune 500 firm, removed a reference to “promoting racial equity” from a website about inclusion at some point last year.

The Arden Hills-based cooperative declined to comment, as did Minnesota’s newest public company, 3M spinoff Solventum. UnitedHealth Group, Minnesota’s largest public company and one of the largest in the country, also declined to comment, as did Best Buy, Target, Medtronic, U.S. Bancorp, Ameriprise and Fastenal.

APi Group, a safety services and specialty services supplier based in New Brighton, is the only company that provided a statement from its CEO. It said it has used DEI initiatives since it went public in 2020 to build a better company through leadership development.

“As a company, we will continue to live our values,” said CEO Russ Becker in a statement. “Our values provide clear direction on what is right and what we need to do to create our desired culture. … Great leaders must be inclusive leaders.”

Austin, Minn.-based Hormel Foods said in a statement, “Our goal is to cultivate a culture where everyone feels welcomed, respected, included and valued. While our strategy is enduring, we regularly review and evolve our tactics to best meet the needs of our team.”

Xcel Energy said it will continue to support employees with “a culture where everyone feels a sense of belonging and can contribute to the company’s success.” But it also will make sure all of its policies meet state and federal law.

Today, it is legally much trickier for companies to explicitly advance equity goals than it was in 2020. In 2023, the Supreme Court reversed the legality of affirmative action. Now, Trump’s orders could change the rules that federal contractors or grant recipients must follow.

Goldstein, who works out of Dorsey’s Seattle office, said Trump’s orders, plus a memo reinforcing them from his new attorney general, Pam Bondi, “is a very effective tool to tell the nation’s largest employers that ‘I’m making a list of companies for investigation and for litigation’ and according to Pam Bondi’s memo, potential criminal sanctions. … There are lists you don’t want to be on.”

These criminal investigations, if they come to be, will involve public statements but also emails and internal memos, he said, so he suggests not watering down the language but actually making goals more specific.

“If you’re still committed to that principle, I think you need to have very specific language to thread that needle of DEI,” Goldstein said. “I think those specific policies are easier to defend because you can’t read into them things that someone who’s trying to sue you wants to read in.”

For example, if a company wants employee resource or affinity groups, make sure they are open to all. Target’s statement when it announced its DEI pauses, for example, said it is keeping resource groups but said besides being open to all they will focus on career development.

“Don’t get rid of those things, because that’s going to send a horrible signal to your employees,” Goldstein said. “All you really need to do is make sure that those groups are open to everybody.”

Some companies have always been private about DEI, setting goals but not being a national leader like Target was after Floyd’s murder.

Ultimately, companies navigating the changing political landscape must rethink how they communicate their values, said Williams, founding director of St. Thomas' Racial Justice Initiative.

“There will be communities that want corporations to embrace DEI as a stand against the administration,” he said. “But corporations have to be strategic. The new standard should be: Show us what you’re doing without telling us, because in the telling, you risk becoming a target.”

As Target moves forward with its rebranded “Belonging at the Bullseye” initiative, observers will be watching closely to see whether the company remains committed to diversity efforts—or whether its shift in language signals a farther retreat.

That’s because the studies show that a more diverse workforce leads to better business results.

“Teams that include a wide range of perspectives are more likely to spot big product gaps or errors — like a voice-recognition system that doesn’t recognize female voices, or an automated hand dryer that doesn’t recognize darker-skinned hands," Williams said.

Victor Stefanescu, Christopher Snowbeck, Walker Orenstein and Bill Lukitsch of the Minnesota Star Tribune contributed to this story.