Attorney General Tim Griffin issued the following statement after he and Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey co-led a letter urging the Business Roundtable, a national association of the nation’s top CEOs, to abandon the unlawful and misguided DEI initiative previously announced by Business Roundtable:
“This letter is consistent with what I and many other state attorneys general have been saying for a long time. DEI initiatives are contrary to the core purpose of publicly traded companies. Corporations are designed to foster economic growth, create jobs, and maximize shareholder returns. Corporate officers can’t accomplish those things and fulfill their fiduciary duties if they are focused on arbitrary goals that are at best ill-defined and at worst discriminatory and offensive to most Arkansans.”
“Many of the Business Roundtable’s member CEOs are coming to this realization on their own and abandoning these practices. It’s time that all Business Roundtable members drop this harmful initiative and commit to merit-based hiring and a focus on shareholders.”
The attorneys general of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, South Carolina, and South Dakota signed the letter co-led by Missouri and Arkansas.
Original source can be found here.