Lockheed Martin phases out key DEI policy after shareholder concerns

Major defense contractor Lockheed Martin announced Thursday that it will phase out employee resource groups, which divide workers along racial, LGBTQ, and activism lines, after President Donald Trump’s recent executive orders and after shareholders expressed concern about an anti-Christian double standard.

“As we shared in January, Lockheed Martin took immediate action to ensure compliance with President Trump’s Executive Order 14173, encouraging merit-based talent management practices within U.S. companies,” Lockheed Martin Chairman, President, and CEO Jim Taiclet said in an email to staff shared with The Daily Signal.

The executive order, issued Jan. 21, declared that “diversity, equity, and inclusion” efforts in the federal government, companies, the medical industry, higher education, and other places can violate federal civil rights laws, which bar discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. The order directs federal agencies to encourage the private sector “to end illegal DEI discrimination and preferences.”

In the order’s wake, Lockeed Martin “conducted a thorough review of our efforts to recruit, retain, and promote the best aerospace and defense talent in the world to ensure full alignment with the executive order and our core values—Do What’s Right, Respect Others, and Perform with Excellence,” Taiclet shared.

He announced the results of the review and new policies.

Lockheed Martin’s Changes

Lockheed Martin reviewed its company trainings, “removed all goals and incentives based on demographic representation and affirmative action plans,” and altered its “social impact funding” to align with the order.

Perhaps most substantively, the company announced it had removed employee subgroups based on race and political causes. Many companies maintain and fund “employee resource groups,” mostly for minority groups the Left claims are oppressed: racial minorities, women, people who identify as LGBTQ, and others.

“After careful review, we have decided to permanently sunset our Business Resource Groups and Employee Networks organized around demographics, identities, or advocacy,” Taiclet wrote. “This is effective immediately. We will explore new employee engagement opportunities, focused on our mission and open to all team members, that support leadership development and talent recruitment and retention.”

Lockheed Martin updated its Jan. 23 statement on the executive order.

‘Win for the Company’

Jerry Bowyer, an investment manager for Lockheed Martin shareholder David Bahnsen, celebrated the news.

“I think it’s a win for the company, for sure,” Bowyer told The Daily Signal in a Thursday phone call. “Politically neutral is good for business.”

Bowyer gave credit to Trump’s executive order but also noted that he advocated for removing the employee resource groups on Bahnsen’s behalf.

“David was willing to do a proposal, the proposal started a conversation, and the company said they were dropping their DEI requirements for suppliers,” Bowyer said.

He and Bahnsen thought the company was genuinely addressing DEI, so they decided to drop the proposal.

“They were undergoing what we thought was a serious review of their employee resource group policies,” Bowyer explained.

He celebrated the announcement as “terrific” and noted, “It’s kind of amazing that everyone doesn’t do that.”

He criticized employee resource groups as divisive and unnecessary.

“You come to work to work,” Bowyer said. “You don’t come to work to say, ‘Here’s who I have sex with.’”

“Why in the world would we organize employees?” he asked. “Why would we cluster them by racial characteristics or sexual proclivities?”

“A lot of money goes into these employee resource groups,” Bowyer noted. “You’re paying employees to be activists against management. You’re forming these little lobbying groups inside the company; they start advocating for political causes.”

He then brought up what he framed as an anti-Christian double standard.

“The president didn’t just have an executive order on DEI,, but he also had an executive order on anti-Christian discrimination,” Bowyer said. Trump signed an executive order aimed at eradicating anti-Christian bias on Feb. 6.

Lockheed Martin “had pride and LGBTQ resource groups but nothing for people of faith,” he noted.

Companies have increasingly rejected DEI and pulled out of the LGBTQ activist Human Rights Campaign’s “Corporate Equality Index,” spurred on by conservative activists like Robby Starbuck, shareholders like Bahnsen, and Christian law firm Alliance Defending Freedom’s Viewpoint Diversity Score. Companies had been rejecting DEI before Trump’s election in November, but the president’s moves have accelerated this trend.

[Editor’s note: This story originally was published by The Daily Signal.]