WASHINGTON—Alliance Defending Freedom released its second annual Viewpoint Diversity Score Business Index this week, providing Americans with the most comprehensive measurement of free speech and religious freedom at powerful corporations.
The Heritage Foundation awarded ADF one of its inaugural Innovative Prizes in 2022 to support the creation of the Viewpoint Diversity Score Business Index. Andrew Olivastro, Heritage’s vice president of outreach, serves on ADF’s Advisory Council for the index. Olivastro made the following statement Wednesday:
“Business leaders have a responsibility to use their cultural influence to advance core civil liberties enjoyed by everyone, like free speech and religious freedom. Shareholders, employees, and politicians should all hold CEOs accountable when they instead focus on divisive, woke political agendas.
“JPMorgan Chase, as an example, felt this most recently as 19 state attorneys general, 14 state treasurers, and 60 financial professionals—in addition to company shareholders—called out its efforts to de-bank religious customers.
“One stellar roadmap to end corporate cancel culture can be found in ADF’s Viewpoint Diversity Score Business Index, which scores 75 publicly traded corporations and shows that despite some progress business leaders need to do more to adopt policies and practices that respect their employees, consumers, and fellow Americans.”
The Viewpoint Diversity Score Business Index was created in 2022 to measure and improve corporate respect for religious and ideological diversity in the market, workplace, and public square. The index is a unique tool that scores 75 corporate entities on how well they respect religious and ideological diversity—or far more often, how they fail to do so. As massive corporations continue to go woke, holding them accountable and ensuring all Americans’ access to the basic services they provide has never been more important.
In its second edition of the index, only two of the 75 companies scored over 25% out of 100% possible in their respect for speech and religion. As a result, ADF warned that millions of Americans could face punishment or cancellation for their beliefs.
“Threats to freedom don’t just come from the government, but from major corporations like financial institutions and big tech companies that have concentrated power over essential services and communication channels,” ADF Senior Counsel and Senior Vice President for Corporate Engagement Jeremy Tedesco said. “Too often, these corporations de-bank or de-platform Americans, citing policies that give them unbounded discretion to censor people for their views. That needs to change. Companies need to take seriously the way their policies and practices can chill the exercise of speech and religion and deter individuals from participating in the democratic process.”
Heritage created the Innovation Prize to financially support innovative solutions to the most pressing issues facing America. The Heritage Innovation Prize recognizes and provides substantive financial awards that, in total, amount to $1 million annually to results-oriented nonprofits for projects involving research, litigation, education, outreach, or communications. Learn more at heritage.org/innovationprize.
