Adobe, Marriott Part of Diversity Reporting Retreat on Nasdaq

Adobe, Marriott International, Charter Communications, and Fifth Third are among more than three dozen large companies that have scrubbed public data about women and minorities on their boards so far this year, as the courts and Trump administration assail DEI.

The firms have either scaled back board diversity disclosures to investors or abandoned them altogether since January, according to a Bloomberg Law review of corporate filings. They all list on Nasdaq, which mandated the reporting until a court threw out rules requiring it in December.

Far fewer large companies are making thorough disclosures about their boards’ makeup so far this year. Among those that did: Apple, Qualcomm, and Starbucks are among more than 20 other big firms included charts with detailed data about their directors’ demographics in their 2025 proxy statements, which shareholders receive before companies’ annual meetings.

Such board disclosures are on track to continue dwindling as companies move away from diversity reporting more broadly, said Andrew Jones, principal environmental, social, and governance researcher at the Conference Board, a business think tank. Diversity, equity, and inclusion reporting poses a risk for companies, as the Trump administration looks to root out any wrongdoing tied to DEI, he said.

“Why attract attention? Why attract potential scrutiny?” Jones said. “No company wants to be one of those companies that finds itself in the political and legal crosshairs.”

Disappearing Disclosures

Bloomberg Law’s disclosure analysis is based on proxy statements of companies in the Nasdaq-100 and Nasdaq Financial-100 indexes, representing the largest financial and non-financial firms.

More than 60 of the companies have submitted proxy statements so far this year. All of them had included board diversity data in those filings in 2024, the last year Nasdaq Inc. required it.

Adobe Inc., Marriott International Inc., Charter Communications Inc., and Fifth Third Bancorp in 2024 each had a proxy statement with a table that showed the gender and demographic breakdown of their directors, modeling suggested reporting templates from Nasdaq.

Nasdaq since 2022 had required thousands of companies listed on its stock exchanges to report annually on how many board members fit various racial and ethnic categories, and to identify LGBTQ+ or women directors. Companies generally were required to disclose the data in either their proxy statements or on their websites.

The now-overturned rules also directed firms to have diverse boards or explain why they didn’t. Under President Joe Biden, Nasdaq in 2021secured the consent of the Securities and Exchange Commission to implement the regulations. But the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit said in its December decision tossing the rules that the SEC didn’t have the power to approve them.

Adobe and Marriott issued proxy statements less than four months later without a board diversity matrix, a staple of the filings since 2022.

Marriott now only says in its proxy statement that “six of our 13 director nominees are female and seven are male, and four of our director nominees are people of color.” Adobe says in its proxy filing it has seven director nominees with a “demographic background,” representing “characteristics such as race/ethnicity (4 directors) and/or gender (4 directors).”

Fifth Third and Charter say even less in their 2025 proxy statements. The bank and the cable television and internet provider both abandoned board diversity charts that first appeared in their 2022 filings and didn’t include any data about their directors’ demographics.

Companies are increasingly showing that race and gender shouldn’t factor into whether someone has the strength and ability to sit on a board, said Edward Blum, the legal strategist who helped challenge Nasdaq’s rules in court. He also helped bring the case that led to the 2023 Supreme Court decision limiting the use of race in college admissions.

“Companies that continue to identify and discuss the racial and ethnic backgrounds of their board members are being shortsighted,” Blum said in an interview. “They are promoting the idea that someone’s race or ethnicity tells us something very, very important about that person. And that I believe is very misguided.”

Charter and Fifth Third representatives declined to comment. Adobe and Marriott representatives didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Reporting Pressure

The SEC blessed Nasdaq’s rules in 2021 amid a push by BlackRock Inc., State Street Corp., and other money managers for more diverse boards. Nasdaq said at the time board diversity improves corporate governance and company performance.

Four years later, in January 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing agencies to investigate companies for “illegal DEI.” By then, BlackRock already was abandoning a push for boards to have at least 30% of their directors identify as diverse, according to its 2025 guidelines for shareholder voting released in December. State Street has ended a similar board diversity campaign, according to its 2025 shareholder voting policies.

But the pullback came after investors had learned through Apple Inc.’s 2025 proxy statement, for example, that it had three board nominees who were women identifying as African American, Asian, and Latino. Qualcomm Inc. shareholders found out in the company’s proxy paperwork this year that it had a woman who identified as Hispanic or Latinx. Starbucks Corp. let its investors know in its latest proxy statement it had women nominated to its board who identified as LGBTQ+ and Asian.

Representatives of the companies didn’t respond to requests for comment, though Apple CEO Tim Cook and Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol have defended their corporate diversity efforts this year.

Marian Macindoe, managing director of sustainable investment strategy at Parnassus Investments LLC, said she doesn’t blame companies for scaling back board diversity disclosures as anti-DEI pressure increases. But companies should continue to pursue diverse boards for the good of their businesses, she said.

“I don’t think that any uniform board is going to be making high-quality decisions no matter what the composition is, if it’s uniform,” Macindoe said.