Christian Legal Group That Helped Topple Roe Shifts Fight to DEI
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Published: Jan 18, 2025
By Emily Birnbaum
The Alliance Defending Freedom Viewpoint Diversity Index
Connecting The Dots
How the Christian Legal Firm That Toppled Roe Is Battling DEI in the Workplace
Background
Alliance Defending Freedom—the Christian legal advocacy group behind the fall of Roe v. Wade—has pushed its conservative crusade into a new frontier: private companies.
In May 2022, ADF launched a “Viewpoint Diversity Index” to score corporations like Amazon and Bank of America according to how effectively they reject DEI and ESG initiatives. The group teamed up with a Christian investment group claiming to represent $250 billion in assets to build the index and rallied its network of 4,800-plus “allied attorneys” to pressure companies to axe diversity and anti-discrimination initiatives.
In late 2022, ADF hosted an invite-only webinar on its anti-DEI and anti-ESG efforts, reported Bloomberg in January 2025 based on recordings and other materials obtained by Documented. The call was attended by hundreds of ADF allied attorneys.
During the call, senior ADF counsel Jeremy Tedesco announced the group's latest battleground: private corporations.
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ADF's "Viewpoint Diversity Score" Webinar (2022)
The reason ADF created this index, explained Tedesco in a recording of the webinar obtained by Documented, was to hold companies "accountable" when its "bread and butter"—filing lawsuits in court—is much harder to do when it comes to private actors. “The typical remedies that we have,” he said, “we don't have when it comes to private companies. "That's why the index exists."
What is DEI?
Many companies have embraced DEI—diversity, equity, and inclusion—policies in the workplace. Often, this includes efforts to hire a more diverse labor force or to promote pay equity.
But ADF has decried DEI as “an experiment in modern-day discrimination,” especially against people who are “white, male, Christian—or all three.”
ADF channeled its anti-diversity efforts into a wider push against Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG), a tool for measuring companies’ track record on issues like climate change and labor rights.
As right-wing groups protest ESG for advancing a “woke agenda,” ADF has offered its own tool for valuing companies—one that emphasizes protection for religious beliefs.
Private power is becoming an equal to or greater threat to free speech and religious freedom than government power.
- ADF Senior Counsel Jeremy Tedesco during a 2022 webinar on ADF's Viewpoint Diversity Index
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ADF 2022 Viewpoint Diversity Index Webinar Slides
During its webinar, according to slides obtained by Documented, ADF named “‘Woke’ Inc.” as a “threat” to free speech and religious liberty. The slide deck showcased the Viewpoint Diversity Index in action. One example graded Amazon on criteria such as whether "Diversity Policy Includes Religious and Ideological Beliefs" and "Less Than 45% of Political Spending Undermined Free Speech."
ADF has long protested diversity and anti-discrimination programs for silencing Christians.
In 2023, ADF decried the “Equality Act”—an effort to ban discrimination based on sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity—as a “dangerous attempt to force people of faith to abandon their sincerely held beliefs."
In January, when President Trump signed an executive order rolling back diversity protections in federal agencies and universities, the group celebrated the move.
“DEI is on its way out,” ADF said in a statement.
“And not a day too soon.”
How does ADF measure “viewpoint diversity”?
According to its methodology, ADF’s rubric focuses on expanding accommodations for religious beliefs in the workplace.
Some of its criteria include whether a company’s policies explicitly protects “free exercise of religion” and if the company “officially recognize[s] one or more Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) specific to different religious faiths (e.g., Christian, Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh, LDS/Latter-Day Saints, Jehovah's Witnesses).”
ADF also looks at whether a company’s employee trainings “avoid divisive concepts" around race and gender.
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ADF Memo on "Avoiding Divisive Concepts in Workplace Training"
ADF's memo on "Avoiding Divisive Concepts in Workplace Training" pushes companies to audit their employee trainings to “avoid divisive concepts.” According to ADF, these are concepts that often come up when discussing topics like “antiracism,” “cultural appropriation,” and “hate speech.”
ADF also penalizes companies for backing political causes like same-sex marriage or contraception.
It docks points if “45 percent or more of the company’s political contributions" went to lawmakers "who have a legislative record of opposing free speech or religious liberty.” For ADF, this includes lawmakers who backed the Respect for Marriage Act, which would codify the right to same-sex marriage, and the Right to Contraception Act, which would establish the right to access birth control.
These bills, ADF said, would “threaten” religious groups from “living out their beliefs about marriage or human sexuality.”
After the webinar, ADF sent a follow-up email to its "allied attorney" network to put the Viewpoint Diversity Index to use.
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ADF Viewpoint Diversity Webinar Follow-Up
ADF asked its allied lawyers to tell their corporate clients about the Index and to cite it in their legal memos. It also asked people to offer legal expertise to a “growing network of allied investors” interested in filing shareholder resolutions to pressure companies to end these initiatives.
ADF often uses its network of 4,800+ allied lawyers to carry out its initiatives.
“ADF’s allied attorneys are the armies in the field, carrying ideologically motivated precedent into these spaces that, on their own, wouldn’t necessarily be as visible,” Alison Gash, a University of Oregon professor told Bloomberg.
“Through the help of these armies, they suddenly have real power.
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ADF Allied Attorney Brochure
ADF's describes its "allied attorneys" network as "essential" to the organization's work. Often working pro-bono, these lawyers have helped ADF by "playing an active role" in landmark cases like Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which overruled Roe v. Wade.
ADF has already started putting the Viewpoint Diversity Index to work. Last year, ADF used it to help Christian investors draft 28 shareholder resolutions during annual shareholder meetings, according to Bloomberg. These include resolutions related to Apple, PayPal, and JPMorgan Chase.
ADF teamed up with Inspire Investing LLC to build the Viewpoint Diversity Index.
Inspire is a Christian financial firm that promotes “biblically responsible” investing and claims to manage or advise over $250 billion in assets.
Inspire, too, has cited the Index in its own shareholder activism.
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Inspire Investing LLC Letter to SEC Requesting AT&T Audit
Inspire Investing has sent letters to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission citing ADF and the Viewpoint Diversity Index. This letter, obtained by Documented, urges AT&T's shareholders to call for an audit of how DEI policies "impact employees and prospective employees."
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ADF "Model Policy" for Corporations
ADF has also urged companies to adopt a “model policy” pledging to “consult stakeholders with diverse religious and ideological views before taking stands on social and political issues."
ADF's work has caught the attention of other anti-ESG groups.
In 2022, ADF’s Viewpoint Diversity Index was awarded the Heritage Foundation’s Innovation Prize.
The prize is given annually to organizations working to “unite conservatives” and “defeat the destructive ideology and designs of the radical left.”
A Generational Fight
Since its inception, ADF has sought to create a world more aligned with Christian conservatism.
But lately, its ambitions have become far broader.
In 2023, ADF expressed interest in taking on a much wider range of issues, including "corruption in the bureaucratic state," reported the New Yorker based on internal recordings provided by Documented.
The Next Target for the Group That Overturned Roe
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Published: Oct 2, 2023
By David D. Kirkpatrick
In its three-decade history, ADF has devoted itself to “generational” battles against abortion, gay marriage, trans rights, and even public education.
Now, ADF has now expanded its fight from courtrooms into boardrooms.
The group is again taking the long view.
“Time will tell,” said Tedesco, “whether we can really move these Fortune 1000 companies in the right direction.”