The chain is CVS, which the Free Enterprise Project (FEP) at the National Center for Public Policy Research, has been asking to cut ties with the HRC.
HRC is the largest LGBTQ-plus advocacy organization in the United States, a nonprofit group working to advance what it calls equal rights and protections.
It’s highly involved in public education, publishing research on LGBTQ issues, providing lesson plans and “school climate” resources for educators, providing guides for workplaces and healthcare settings and running a national awareness campaign.
FEP/National Center owns stock in companies so as to engage with executives at shareholder meetings about issues that could hurt business or harm shareholders.
"As far as we know, they are still cooperating with the (Corporate Equality Index) survey, but they appear to have dropped their sponsorship," said FEP's Stefan Padfield. "So, we engaged with them last year, filed a shareholder proposal, basically asking them to step away from HRC, stop participating in the survey, stop sponsoring."
The concern for Padfield is that these ties or connections lead a company to basically "get out over their skis" when it comes to issues such as transgenderism.
In recent meetings, CVS did not seem to care about its skis. It wasn't until Padfield was preparing for another encounter with executives and shareholders that Padfield noticed some changes.
"I just wanted to double check that CVS was still … I believe they were a platinum sponsor of HRC, and it turns out they're not. Then when we dug a little deeper it turned out that approximately 35% of the corporate sponsorships have been lost since last year," said Padfield. "We want to shine some light on that. We think we can certainly take some credit for that. So, now, we're sort of getting the word out that CVS appears to be one of many corporations that have at least walked back the sponsorship part of their support for HRC."
