AT&T once again in hot water over DEI policies, lands in Manhattan court

Will AT&T manage to work things out? | Image by PhoneArena

Even though AT&T (and many other big corporations) has put the kibosh on their DEI practices and policies in 2025, the diversity, equity and inclusion (hence the DEI acronym) topic still manages to cause trouble.

AT&T is taken to court

As Reuters reports, four New York public pension funds that are AT&T shareholders sue the telco over DEI-related matters. The complaint was filed on yesterday's Tuesday in Manhattan federal court. The problem, as shareholders see it, is that AT&T has refused to let shareholders vote on a transparency request. The transparency request is about making public a detailed breakdown of AT&T's 130,000+ workforce by race, ethnicity and gender.

AT&T refused to put that proposal on the ballot for the upcoming shareholder meeting and asked the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for permission to exclude certain shareholder proposals. A recent SEC policy change made it easier for companies to justify blocking proposals if they claim a "reasonable basis" for doing so. AT&T says it relied on that rule.

"That's not good enough"

However, the four pension funds argue that AT&T is stretching the SEC rule too far. In their view, shareholders have a legitimate right to vote on this type of disclosure request. By blocking the vote, AT&T is allegedly harming shareholder rights. They want the court to force AT&T to include the proposal. They say that AT&T has previously shown the detailed DEI breakdown (in 2021, 2022 and 2023, for example), but then stopped doing so.

Of course, this happened shortly after President Trump was voted in. His administration tried to put an end to DEI policies and many in the private sector, like AT&T, followed suit. Last year, AT&T had to play ball since it was looking to get FCC approval for a transaction it made in 2024 when it agreed to purchase spectrum from UScellular.

AT&T already reports the workforce diversity data privately to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), but that's not enough for the funds.

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