NLPC Demands Microsoft Give Health Coverage for Detransitioners (Updated w/ Video)

Today, the National Legal and Policy Center presented a “Gender-Based Compensation/Benefits Gaps and Associated Risks” proposal at the Microsoft annual shareholder meeting, which would require the company’s board to examine whether it is providing health insurance coverage equally to employees who seek to “de-transition” from “gender affirming” surgeries and treatments they have received in the past, but have come to regret.

Microsoft’s board of directors opposed our proposal, as explained on pages 69-70 of the firm’s proxy statement. NLPC filed a Notice of Exempt Solicitation report with the Securities and Exchange Commission in response to the board’s opposition statement.

Speaking at the meeting was Paul Chesser, director of NLPC’s Corporate Integrity Project. You can watch his video presentation here (Chesser’s remarks start at 12:10), and a transcript of his three-minute remarks follows ):

Good morning.

 

In 2019 and in 2021, Microsoft shareholders considered proposals that asked for reports about the Company’s gaps in pay and benefits “across” gender.

 

Those proposals seem so antiquated now, because they were only concerned about compensation gaps between women and men.

 

I say they are antiquated because as we have been told by LGBTQ advocacy groups and the tech industry for many years now, that there are more than two genders.

 

How ignorant everyone was back then!

 

I mean, how can you produce a report about pay gaps ACROSS genders when you don’t include ALL the genders??

 

In Microsoft’s opposition statement to our proposal, the Company impugns our motives by saying our request “appears to stem from animosity towards certain reproductive and gender-related health benefits.”

 

ON THE CONTRARY: We are only following previous arguments about discriminatory gaps in pay regarding gender, and LGBTQ definitions of how many genders there are, and how they function, as it pertains to gender fluidity and sex change.

 

In other words, we are simply following their own arguments – and Microsoft’s – to their logical conclusions.

 

And thanks to the smashing successes of pressure groups like the pro-LGBTQ Human Rights Campaign, we now have protected classifications of “gender identity” and “sexual orientation” against pay and benefits discrimination under U.S. Department of Labor and EEOC codes.

 

Microsoft proudly boasts that it affirms individuals’ ability to change genders, and that its insurance benefits pay for transition surgeries for employees and their dependents – including their children.

 

Yet considering all these pro-transition arguments by Microsoft and by LGBTQ advocates, there is a gaping discriminatory hole in the Company’s pay and benefits coverage, as designated under EEOC rules.

 

And that gap omits care for de-transitioners.

 

De-transitioners are real, they’re growing in number, and they are increasingly angry that they’ve been told that they can easily change their sex with chemical and surgical procedures without problems.

 

Unfortunately a lot of them end up stuck with MORE medical problems like chronic pain and sexual dysfunction, but then they can’t get treatments or insurance coverage to reverse their decisions.

 

De-transitioners fit under “gender identity” and “sexual orientation” as much as any other EEOC discrimination category, and therefore must be protected.

 

Yet Microsoft, who apparently doesn’t care for employees and their dependents who have been needlessly mutilated, has the nerve to say that we as shareholders have “animosity” over certain gender-related benefits.

 

Again, we are only following your own arguments to their logical conclusions, so we advise Microsoft executives and the Board to look in the mirror when it comes to accusations of animosity.

 

Please vote FOR Proposal Number 5.

Read NLPC’s shareholder proposal for the 2023 Microsoft annual meeting here.

Watch Chesser deliver his remarks at the meeting here (starts at 12:10).

NLPC also called upon its fellow shareholders to vote against billionaire LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman for the Microsoft board of directors.