McDonald’s Scraps Most Its Woke DEI Policies, Citing ‘Changing Legal Landscape’

McDonald’s has joined the growing list of companies that have scrapped their diversity targets.

In a statement posted on its corporate website on Monday, the company revealed that it had recently carried out a Civil Rights Audit to assess its current policies.

The statement read:

Last year, we completed a comprehensive Civil Rights Audit (CRA) that looked at all aspects of inclusion across our system.

We also engaged with shareholders to understand their expectations and assessed the overall landscape of shareholder proposals.

Following the Supreme Court ruling in STUDENTS FOR FAIR ADMISSIONS, INC. v. PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE, we also assessed the shifting legal landscape to anticipate how this ruling may impact corporations such as McDonald’s.

And finally, we benchmarked our approach to other companies who are also re-evaluating their own programs.

As a result of this audit, McDonald’s will implement the following changes:

We are retiring setting aspirational representation goals and instead keeping our focus on continuing to embed inclusion practices that grow our business into our everyday process and operations.

We are pausing external surveys to focus on the work we are doing internally to grow the business.

We are retiring Supply Chain’s Mutual Commitment to DEI pledge in favor of a more integrated discussion with suppliers about inclusion as it relates to business performance.

We are evolving how we refer to our diversity team, which will now be the Global Inclusion Team. This name change is more fitting for McDonald’s in light of our inclusion value and better aligns with this team’s work.

The announcement was celebrated by conservative activist Robby Starbuck, who has led the way in successfully urging companies to scrap their departments, which are designed to prioritize race, gender and other inherited characteristics as opposed to the real merits of job applicants.

BIG news: @McDonalds is ending a number of woke DEI policies today. Now let me tell you what’s changing and how it happened.

3 days ago I told McDonald’s that I’d be doing a story on woke policies there. Today they’ve announced the following changes:

• Hiring: They will END… pic.twitter.com/bvFglf6pxw

— Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) January 6, 2025

Many other U.S. companies have also scaled back or dismantled their Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs.

Notable examples include Walmart, which ceased considering race and gender in supplier contracts; Boeing, which disbanded its global DEI department; and Google, which reduced DEI staffing amid budget cuts.

Other large companies, such as Toyota, Ford, Harley-Davidson, and John Deere, have also redefined or curtailed their DEI initiatives in response to political pressures.