Annual LGBTQ report hides the truth: Companies are abandoning woke ideology, returning to business

America’s premier corporate LGBTQ ideology enforcer, the Human Rights
Campaign, lost significant sponsorship, engagement and even slashed
staff last year, one watchdog group tells The Lion, indicating
businesses are retreating from corporate wokeism. 

But the retreat is obscured by HRC’s own annual report, the Corporate
Equality Index (CEI), which grades companies on how pro-LGBTQ they are. 

However, a data analysis from 1792 Exchange – a nonprofit advocating
corporate America move “back to neutral” on ideological issues – reveals
65% fewer Fortune 500 companies chose to even participate in the CEI. 

“Last year, CEI participation essentially plateaued. But this year it’s
actually plummeted,” 1792 Director of Research Dustin DeVito told The
Lion in an interview. 

Furthermore, HRC laid off 20% of its staff in 2026, DeVito said. HRC
sponsors have also dropped by 48%. In 2022, HRC Platinum Corporate
Partners peaked at 21 sponsors. In 2026, only 11 sponsors – including
Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and Disney – fund HRC. 

The decline may help explain why for the first time in over 20 years,
the HRC’s publicly available CEI data for 2026 provides less information
about the details of each company’s scores than ever before. 

“It’s procedure for them going back to when it was first released in
2002, and this is the first year they did not release the PDF or brag
about who got a perfect score,” DeVito said, adding that “the available
information only displays a company’s score but doesn’t specify which
sub-criteria the company met.” 

Full access to the CEI this year was only granted to HRC members and CEI
participants, and companies with a perfect score could “opt in to the
distinction and sharing of logos,” according to the website. 

But even those perfect scores were easier to obtain this year, which
DeVito suspects is an effort to prop up the whole exercise and make
companies appear more inclusive. 

A perfect score (100) on the CEI indicates a company has provided
documentation to prove its ongoing LGBTQ policies. These policies
include but are not limited to family healthcare coverage for
transgender surgeries and other such interventions, restroom and dress
code “inclusion” and LGBTQ trainings for staff. 

Not only does the company itself have to promote LGBTQ ideology, but the
company’s vendors and supported charities also must demonstrate
“non-discrimination based on gender ideology.” 

But for a perfect CEI score this year, HRC dropped necessary
qualifications by around 75% in two of its four categories. Under LGBTQ
“workforce trainings,” for example, companies needed to demonstrate only
one of five policies, while in previous years, at least four were
required. Additionally, under “outreach and engagement,” only one
example of LGBTQ community engagement or promotion was essential for
2026, but previously, companies needed at least five. 

As a result, “The numbers look like they’ve somewhat stabilized, but in
reality, they’ve collapsed,” DeVito said. “They’ve lowered the bar just
to make it look like it’s not as bad as it is.” 

According to the 2026 report, 534 companies scored a 100 on the CEI – a
30% decrease from last year, when 765 companies earned a perfect score.
But even this number is inflated, given the change in requirements and
the inclusion of nearly 100 woke law firms to boost the number, DeVito
explained. Additionally, 39 companies, which previously participated in
the CEI and did not score a 100, earned a perfect score in 2026. 

“This serves as further proof that HRC’s numbers are inflated,” DeVito
said. 

“[HRC] is one of, if not the most primary group pushing all these
issues,” DeVito concluded. “And so to the extent we can get people to
connect the dots and not just talk about wokeness as some vague,
ethereal term, but realize this is a group concretely pushing
transgenderism among children, through schools, through company
trainings and through your healthcare plan, then it helps people to then
act.” 

Public awareness of woke ideology has certainly grown, DeVito added. But
action – not merely outrage – produces tangible results. 

“We need to work on distancing ourselves from this group, delegitimizing
them and exposing them.” 

https://readlion.com/annual-lgbtq-report-hides-the-truth-companies-are-ab
andoning-woke-ideology-returning-to-business/