President Donald Trump’s crusade against diversity, equity and inclusion has reached beyond the federal government and into corporate board rooms, as his administration threatens legal action against businesses that don’t dismantle their DEI programs.

Some prominent Seattle employers — including Amazon, Starbucks and the law firm K&L Gates — appear to have taken the hint.

All three companies in recent months have deleted or watered down references to their diversity programs on their websites.

K&L Gates, a global behemoth and one of the largest law firms in Seattle, purged entire website sections that had detailed its diversity commitments, including some specific pledges and data on hiring and promotions.

Amazon excised website sections on diversity like “equality for Black people” and deleted some references to transgender people.

Starbucks rebranded its “Inclusion, Diversity and Belonging” efforts on the corporate website to the more vanilla “Belonging at Starbucks.”

Shortly after taking office, Trump signed an executive order banning the federal agencies and contractors from promoting diversity or hiring based on “race, color, sex, sexual preference, religion, or national origin.”

The order also took aim at private companies, universities and nonprofits, directing the U.S. Attorney General’s Office to identify “the most egregious and discriminatory DEI practitioners” for potential federal investigations. Attorney General Pam Bondi followed up with a Feb. 5 memo directing the Justice Department to come up with potential criminal and civil investigations for companies or organizations practicing “illegal discrimination or preferences.”

In the wake of the murder of George Floyd in 2020, many companies created or bolstered DEI policies. One of the main efforts of the movement was to diversify corporate workforces, many of which had been predominantly white and male.

But facing Trump’s executive order, and related anti-DEI campaigns by conservative politicians and activists, companies are reacting “to a real legal threat” said Aaron Goldstein, a Seattle partner with the business law firm Dorsey & Whitney.

While efforts to increase workforce diversity are legal so long as they don’t involve actual discrimination in hiring or promotions, Goldstein said companies are clearly wary of becoming obvious targets for the Trump administration.

“I don’t have to outrun the bear. I just have to outrun the person next to me,” said Goldstein. “That type of calculus I think is really at play here.”

K&L Gates scrubs “commitment to diversity”

K&L Gates scrubbed its website to delete references to diversity it had until recently advertised prominently.

As late as January, the firm boasted at the top of its website about “our commitment to diversity,” according to archived screenshots. That has since vanished.

The global law firm with longtime Seattle ties — the Gates refers to Microsoft founder Bill Gates’ father — has renamed its “Diversity and Inclusion” committee to the “Opportunity and Inclusion” committee.

The description of the firm’s rebranded committee cut a reference to assisting transgender people with name changes in the U.S. and Australia. Also removed was a statement that K&L Gates leadership “actively promotes global diversity and inclusion as a top priority.”

The firm purged website charts showing diverse-workforce metrics and accolades the firm had received for such efforts. That included references to “ The Mansfield Rule” — a pledge in which law firms commit to ensuring at least 30% of candidates for leadership jobs and promotions are from historically underrepresented communities.

The K&L Gates website edits were first publicized by Above the Law, a legal news website that also reported the firm sent an email to employees acknowledging its rollout of the website alterations “was not handled as well as it should have been.”

The changes came as an unwelcome surprise to some at the firm, according to a K&L Gates attorney who criticized the moves as spineless in an interview with The Seattle Times.

“K&L Gates decided to lead the market in a retreat from its formerly espoused values,” said the attorney, who asked not to be identified out of fear of retaliation.

“The company is signaling to its diverse talent and its diverse clients that they are willing to allow bad actors to dictate how we as an organization respond to foundational challenges,” the attorney added.

In a statement, K&L Gates spokesperson Steven Eliopoulos said the revisions were made by “a cross-section of stakeholders at our firm, including importantly by members of our Opportunity and Inclusion Committee.”

Eliopoulos added the firm places “great value on our team members’ unique backgrounds, talents and skills” and “has not diminished in any way our long-standing commitment to foster an inclusive, talented team.”

Eliopoulos did not respond to questions about why K&L Gates made the changes.

The firm website still mentions some of its efforts to broaden its pool of potential hires “from wide-ranging backgrounds,” including recruiting law students at Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

Amazon pulls “transgender”

Amazon didn’t erase a section titled “diversity, equity and inclusion,” but it did scrub two whole sections called “equality for Black people” and “LGBTQ+ rights.”

Under “diversity, equity and inclusion,” Amazon also changed the language. It removed a reference to the company’s future engineer program, an initiative designed to help students from underrepresented communities pursue careers in computer science. The word “transgender” was also removed from the page.

Amazon told employees in December it was changing some DEI policies, according to an internal memo provided by the company. Candi Castleberry, vice president of Amazon’s inclusive experience and technology organization said in the memo the company was winding down “outdated programs and materials” through the end of 2024.

Amazon was taking a data-driven approach to its DEI initiatives to “evaluate their effectiveness, impact and return-on-investment for which ones should continue,” Castleberry said. The company’s aims to take a less splintered approach to inclusivity programs, and bring them in under one umbrella within Amazon.

“Rather than have individual groups build programs, we are focusing on programs with proven outcomes — and we also aim to foster a more truly inclusive culture,” Castleberry said.

Starbucks drops “inclusion,” “diversity”

Starbucks’ website has fewer changes than Amazon’s regarding DEI programs, but the company retitled its inclusion page and removed diversity from the website address.

Site data for the Seattle-based coffee giant’s “Belonging at Starbucks” page shows it was last modified on Jan. 31. Archived screenshots of the page show it used to be called “Inclusion, Diversity and Belonging.”

The word diversity hasn’t been completely erased from the page. Starbucks still says it’s expanding workforce diversity and is committed to “consistently achieving 100% gender and race pay equity in the U.S.”

Like Amazon, Starbucks said it regularly updates its website. The company didn’t comment on the timing of the changes but said it has emphasized “belonging” since 2023.

Specific references to Starbucks’ Supplier Diversity Program have been erased. Through the program, Starbucks buys supplies from businesses owned and operated by women, minorities, veterans, people in the LGBTQ community, or people with disabilities. Businesses in economically distressed areas can also join the program, according to Starbucks.

In 2022, Starbucks announced it was almost doubling the amount of money it spent with such suppliers. The company said it was going to spend $1.5 billion annually on diverse suppliers, up from the $800 million it spent in 2021.

The changes made to the suppliers section in January erased the words diverse and diversity. Starbucks also scrubbed the specific dollar amount Starbucks plans to spend.

Starbucks said its commitments are unchanged, as are any employee programs and benefits.

“Hatred for diversity”

Companies like Starbucks face conservative pushback against DEI efforts beyond the Trump administration.

Last week, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey sued Starbucks, claiming the coffee giant’s diversity hiring practices amounted to illegal discrimination, and led to higher prices and poorer service.

Starbucks said in a statement the attorney general’s allegations were inaccurate.

“Our programs and benefits are open to everyone and lawful,” Starbucks said. “Our hiring practices are inclusive, fair and competitive and designed to ensure the strongest candidate for every job every time.”

Some companies, notably Costco, have resisted the DEI rollbacks. The Issaquah, Washington-based retailer’s shareholders recently rejected a proposal from an activist shareholder to probe its diversity, equity and inclusion practices for legal risks.

Days after that shareholder vote, 19 Republican attorneys general called on Costco to end its workforce diversity programs in a letter to Chief Executive Officer Ron Vachris.

Earlier this month, 16 Democratic attorneys general penned a letter advising companies that efforts to hire more diverse workforces — notwithstanding how they’ve been portrayed in the Trump executive orders — remain legal.

Washington Attorney General Nick Brown did not sign that guidance, but in an interview he called Trump’s DEI rhetoric and orders “offensive and wrong.”

Brown said he understands the pressure faced by institutions like the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, which announced last week it would end its DEI initiatives rather than face the loss of 70% of its annual research funding.

But Brown said it’s “certainly disappointing” to see private companies abandon diversity programs in the face of political bullying.

“In my mind it’s driven by a president who has constantly demonstrated a disdain if not hatred for diversity and people of color.” Brown said.

Daniel Oppong, founder of the Courage Collective, a business consulting firm that has advised companies on DEI programs, said efforts to increase diversity in hiring go back the 1960s and 1970s civil rights movement.

But he said it became “very much in vogue” for employers to promote such efforts in the past few years following the nationwide racial justice protests that after the 2020 murder of George Floyd.

“I would start with examining the motivation and asking why was a company doing it in the first place,” Oppong said. “If you are only doing it in reaction to public pressure and the public climate, then you are going to probably back off in reaction to public pressure.”

Elizabeth Umphress, a business professor at the University of Washington, said it’s “a really unsettling time” to see the assault on DEI programs, which she said have been “wildly misrepresented.”

Racial quotas, for example, are generally illegal. But Umphress said efforts to recruit people from a variety of backgrounds, like many companies do, are legitimate, and research has shown them to be beneficial.

Umphress said companies with increased diversity in their hiring show higher levels of innovation and “are less likely to suffer from groupthink.” In many cases, she said industries have used DEI programs to correct long, documented histories of discrimination that worked against people of color.

Umphress cautioned companies to avoid overreacting to the current political environment.

“The organizations that stick by their values — if it is their values and it’s not just window dressing — they are going to see the real win here,” she said. “Employees are watching and paying attention to these subtle and not so subtle actions of their leaders.”

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