The “anti-ESG” proposal arose somewhat recently, becoming more common within the past five or so years. Similar in spirit to ESG proposals, but their opposite. Like their conventional counterpart, they request a company consider or study or write a report on a specific subject: cancel a company’s DEI initiative, evaluate the increasing cost of implementing enhanced climate disclosure, understand the adverse impact of LGBTQ+ programs on consumer sentiment.
Understandably, these proposals annoy long-time ESG proponents, which anti-ESG proponents in turn seem to understand and relish. Consequently, long-time ESG proponents crow about the low levels of shareholder support for anti-ESG proposals.
We remind those long-time ESG proponents they might moderate that elation. These voting outcomes reflect how shareholders think about precatory proposals overall, rather than principled opposition to the anti-ESG project.
Two organizations account for the majority of anti-ESG proposals, the National Legal and Policy Center and the National Center for Public Policy Research. Both are mostly Washington advocacy and lobbying organizations rather than investors or advisors to other investors. A few individuals and similar lobbyists, such as The Heritage Foundation, account for the balance. Their precatory proposals extend on their overall civic lobbying efforts.
These proponents submitted about 120 precatory proposals to US corporations in 2025, roughly the same as in 2024 and up from perhaps 25 in 2021. Only 50 of those 120 received a vote in 2025, with only about 20 more to go – the rest were withdrawn or granted SEC no-action relief.
Shareholders rejected these proposals decisively. They won a median of 1.4% of votes, about the same as the 1.5% in 2024. None won a majority, with the highest support at 12%.
These votes bring smiles to the faces of long-time ESG proponents. At AAPL an anti-DEI proposal won 3% support, implying “…Apple…investors have today made it clear that the company’s DEI programs are valuable for its staff and the business,” according to ESG activist ShareAction. More generally, ESG report Proxy Preview notes, “As 98% and 99% votes against anti-DEI resolutions showed at Costco, Deere, Apple, and Disney, investors want their boards and management teams to continue to hire and promote based on merit to build a workforce dedicated to excellence and financial outperformance.” And, “[s]hareholders from companies including Costco, Apple, Levi Strauss, among others, pitched a shutout, going 30-0, handing resounding defeats to all anti-DEI proposals that were presented during this year’s proxy season”, another one observes.
ESG proponents misinterpret these results. For a few years now, ESG proposals have fared almost as poorly as anti-ESG ones. ESG proponents submitted many fewer proposals in 2025, saw many more granted SEC no-action relief, and won fewer votes than before, with average support under 10% so far in 2025. ESG proponents have worked at this for decades, rather than the fewer than ten years that anti-ESG proponents have worked at theirs, and still languish at relatively low levels of support.
Investors express their sentiments quite clearly. In 2024, Vanguard opposed all ESG and anti-ESG proposals they voted, culminating a years-long trend of decreasing support. More generally, the lead ESG analyst at Morningstar observed, “[T]here are too many shareholder proposals. So many that it’s beginning to pose a threat to shareholder democracy.”
Much like company leadership, institutional investors view precatory proposals, both ESG and anti-ESG, largely as a nuisance. Proponents submitted close to 1,000 of them a couple of years ago, with some big companies such as AMZN presenting almost 20 proposals to shareholders for a vote. Most start to look alike, with the same climate change goals, DEI evaluations, and the like.
One exception: corporate governance proposals. Shareholders continue to supportthese, at nearly the same level in 2025 as in past years. Consequently, proponents have submitted almost the same number in 2025 as before, compared to the materially lower number of environmental and social proposals submitted in 2025.
We can’t say this disappoints us. As a corp gov aficionado, we embrace every effort to improve how companies and BoDs represent investor interests. Anything that distracts shareholders from that effort, which other ESG and especially anti-ESG proposals arguably do these days, should meet extremely high standards for shareholders to devote precious AGM space.
This post comes to us from Michael R. Levin, founder and editor of The Activist Investor.