Not to be outdone by his one-time rival for the presidency, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis piled on Target this week for the company’s past support for DEI and the LGBTQ+ community, grabbing the culture wars spotlight from President Donald Trump if only for a moment.

DeSantis appointed a new attorney general this week, who promptly sued Target for “misleading” investors about the deleterious effects of the retail giant’s pro-DEI and LGBTQ+ policies. Those inspired a conservative-led backlash in 2023 that hit the company’s bottom line.

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Pride organization rejects Target’s $50K donation after the store turns its back on DEI
“This was kind of the straw that broke the camel’s back,” Twin Cities Pride’s executive director said.

In the suit filed in Fort Myers, new Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier argued that Target violated the Securities Exchange Act by failing to disclose “the known risks” of its DEI and Pride Month initiatives, the AP reports.

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“Corporations that push radical leftist ideology at the expense of financial returns jeopardize the retirement security of Florida’s first responders and teachers,” Uthmeier said in a statement, referring to retirement funds’ investment portfolios. “My office will stridently pursue corporate reform so that companies get back to the business of doing business — not offensive political theatre.”

With his appointment this week, Uthmeier pledged to use the state’s legal muscle to “champion an America-first agenda” and challenge what he called “the left.”

With DeSantis’ own political theatrics, Target is now buffeted from both the left and the right.

After a long history supporting DEI goals, the company publicly rolled back those initiatives just days after President Trump’s executive order purging DEI from the federal government. The company said it would stop providing data to groups like the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index and end a program focused on carrying more products from Black- or minority-owned businesses, among other initiatives.

Target said the rollback was an effort to remain “in step with the evolving external landscape.”

Those actions followed scaling back or removing LGBTQ+ Pride merchandise from a majority of outlets following 2023’s rightwing boycott of the company.

Target has previously said the murder of George Floyd in 2020 in the company’s hometown of Minneapolis motivated it to strengthen its DEI programs.

Target’s DEI retreat inspired at least one longtime beneficiary to reject the company’s support. Minneapolis’ Twin Cities Pride decided to “part ways” with Target, one of its biggest sponsors, following the retailer’s DEI rollback.

In the lawsuit filed in federal court this week, the state argues the company’s 2023 LGBTQ+ Pride collection was uniquely harmful to shareholders.

“The Campaign provoked immense consumer backlash and boycotts that caused Target’s sales to fall for the first time in six years and wiped out over $25 billion in Target’s market capitalization—leading Target’s stock to experience its longest losing streak in 23 years,” the complaint says.

The proposed class action lawsuit is related to an earlier shareholder suit filed in August 2023 against Target, as well as one filed last month by the City of Riviera Beach police pension fund, Business Insider reports.

To their credit, Target executives said during an August 2023 earnings call that while traffic and top-line trends were affected by the Pride collection backlash, “it’s not possible to reliably quantify the separate impact.”

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