On Tuesday, America First Legal’s (AFL) Center for Legal Equality filed a federal civil rights complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) against Hasbro, Inc. and Mattel, Inc. for apparent racial discrimination. AFL also sent letters to the board of directors at both companies reminding them of their fiduciary duties and liability for the waste of corporate assets and destruction of shareholder value in the name of woke virtue signaling.
Hasbro
Hasbro acknowledges using facially illegal racial, ethnic, and sex-based classifications to “balance” the demographic profile of its workforce. In its most recent 10-K filing, Hasbro recited its “2025 DE&I goals,” which include increasing “female representation in leadership (Director +) roles globally to 50%” and “Increasing ethnically and racially diverse employee representation in the U.S. to 25%.”
Hasbro’s 2021-22 “diversity, equity & inclusion report” admits years of civil rights violations. This “report” explicitly states that Hasbro began using unlawful race, national origin, and sex-based quotas or “goals” in 2017 and that the company has actively been working to fulfill those unlawful hiring goals over the past five years. For example, in 2019, “racially and ethnic diversity” new hires represented approximately 25% of all new hires; in 2020, approximately 30%; and in 2021, approximately 35%.
Finally, the evidence is that Hasbro also discriminates based on race and sex with respect to training program admissions; the summer 2022 internship program was “both 50% gender and racially diverse.”
Mattel
Mattel also admits to using unlawful DEI criteria and practices with respect to employment, promotion, and training on the Company’s website and in its filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. For example, the “Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion Goals” section on the Company’s website explicitly states that management is working to increase “representation of women” and “representation by ethnicity [sic]” at all levels.
In its 2022 “Citizenship Report,” the Company states that it “continued to make progress on its DE&I initiatives during 2022” and goes on to present year-over-year statistics from 2020, 2021, and 2022, tracking its progress in the hiring and advancement of employees based on their sex or “ethnicity.”
Mattel also appears to be promoting a radical transgender agenda that teaches young children that they can identify as the opposite gender. Under the “American Girl” segment of the company, Mattel sells a book entitled “Body Image” that promotes the false narrative that biological sex is fluid and not determined at birth.
Shockingly, management instructs a child who “knows for sure” that he or she is “trans or nonbinary” but has not yet entered puberty to see a doctor who “might offer medicine to delay your bodies [sic] changes, giving [the child] more time to think about [his or her] gender.”
America First Legal is holding corporate America to account for its immoral embrace of the illegal and destructive DEI agenda that judges people based on race and sex rather than merit and skill. Corporate managers who violate our Civil Rights laws, interfere with parental rights, and destroy shareholder value to promote the woke agenda should be prepared to face the consequences.
Statement from America First Legal Senior Advisor, Ian Prior:
“Parents across America are spending their hard-earned money buying presents for their children for Christmas and Hanukkah, but those same companies are taking that money and implementing unlawful discriminatory employment practices based on race, sex, and ethnicity. The foundational principle of America is equality under the law, but that principle is being eroded by influential corporations whose actions are setting our nation back decades, all in the pursuit of woke and morally bankrupt ideologies being pushed by a cynical and entitled ‘intellectual’ class that are committed to eroding our commitment to ensure that all are treated equally.“ said Ian Prior.
Read the letters to Hasbro here and here and the letters to Mattel here and here.
