Dive Brief:

• More than half of S&P 100 companies adjusted how they communicated diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in their annual securities filings this year compared to 2024, according to a new report by The Conference Board. 
• Among S&P 500 companies, the use of the acronym “DEI” dropped by 68% compared to 2024, according to the report. Twenty-one percent of companies reduced or removed DEI-related metrics and targets. 
• While firms scaled back DEI language and commitments, 79% percent of S&P 500 firms disclosed board committee oversight of DEI, up from 72%, according to the report. For Russell 3000 companies, this figure jumped from 48.4% to 86.8%. Rather than simply abandoning DEI, this suggests that companies are being more cautious about external messaging while integrating DEI into governance to make it more legally defensible, according to the report.

Dive Insight:

Companies have been rolling back their DEI programs since the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision outlawing affirmative action in higher education.

After President Donald Trump’s reelection, McDonald’s, Meta, a few banks and others preemptively adjusted policies in anticipation of backlash. When a January 2025 executive order directed heads of agencies to target private sector DEI, another wave of major companies — including Target, BlackRock and even law firms — dropped their DEI goals, a trend that continues. A July 23 report by Resume.org reported that 20% of companies have scrapped their DEI programs since Trump’s reelection.

The Conference Board report, based on 2025 Form-10K filings, largely aligns with the individual headlines. More companies in 2025 have limited disclosures of workforce or leadership diversity. The share of S&P 500 companies that disclosed data on women in management dropped from 71.2% in 2024 to 55.1% in 2025, and the share that disclosed the total number of female board members dropped from 90.5% to 60.4%. 

Just 2.5% of companies did not disclose any information about board racial diversity in 2024, but that number jumped to 33.9% this year. Among Russell 3000 companies, that figure leaped from 14.1% to 54.7%.

In recent years, some U.S. public companies have linked executive compensation to DEI-related goals. In 2024, 68% of S&P 500 companies and 41.6% of Russell 3000 companies disclosed in their annual reports that they linked these metrics. In 2025, this figure dropped to 35.3% for S&P 500 companies and 18.7% for Russell 3000 companies. 

Instead, in 2025 more companies disclosed how executive compensation was linked to broader human capital goals, such as talent development and employee engagement. 

“This shift in public disclosure doesn't signal companies are abandoning DEI,” said Andrew Jones, principal researcher at The Conference Board and coauthor of the report, in an Aug. 4 press release. “Rather, they're selectively reframing commitments, reducing public exposure and embedding oversight more quietly yet firmly into governance and human capital management.”

But as companies shift their DEI strategies to protect themselves in a hostile U.S. legal landscape, they also become increasingly misaligned with international disclosure standards, such as the European Union’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, the International Sustainability Standards Board and the Global Reporting Initiative, the report noted. Such standards still emphasize workforce DEI and generally require more consistent demographic disclosure, the report said.