Ahead of Colgate-Palmolive Company’s Annual Meeting on May 8, 2026, the National Legal and Policy Center (“NLPC”) has published an exempt solicitation report that urges shareholders to vote FOR Proposal 4,¹ which requests that the Board eliminate race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, and other DEI-correlated characteristics from the criteria used to select director candidates.
Download the Full ReportColgate’s “Independent Board Candidate Qualifications” explicitly direct its Nominating, Governance and Corporate Responsibility Committee to evaluate candidates based on identity characteristics including race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and gender identity.² These criteria have no legitimate connection to a director’s fiduciary qualifications or business acumen — and they are increasingly at odds with the law.
Colgate: The Last Major U.S. Corporation Standing on DEI?
Colgate-Palmolive is a pronounced outlier. NLPC filed nearly identical proposals at American Express, Deere & Company, Goldman Sachs, Johnson & Johnson, and Colgate-Palmolive. Every other company reached an accommodation — withdrawing DEI language from its governance documents. Only Colgate refused.³ More broadly, corporate America’s retreat from DEI board criteria has been sweeping: Goldman Sachs, State Street Global Advisors, Uber, Amazon, Bank of America, BlackRock, Ford, Walmart, McDonald’s, Google, AT&T, Boeing, Harley-Davidson, John Deere, Lowe’s, Molson Coors, and dozens of others have all announced rollbacks of DEI policies.⁴ Colgate’s claim that its multinational nature requires DEI-driven board selection is contradicted directly by Uber — which operates in more than 70 countries and dropped its formal commitment to include women and minority candidates when filling board seats⁵ — and by Walmart, which operates in 19 countries and has similarly moved away from identity-driven board criteria.⁶
A Legally Precarious Position
The legal environment has turned decisively against DEI board mandates. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit vacated Nasdaq’s board diversity rules, finding no established link between a board’s demographic composition and governance quality.⁷ President Trump’s Executive Order directs the Attorney General to identify and target the most “egregious and discriminatory DEI practitioners” among major corporations.⁸ The Department of Justice has already opened formal False Claims Act investigations, issuing document demands to companies including Google and Verizon,⁹ with litigation anticipated to follow.¹⁰
Financial Performance Demands Better Leadership Focus
Colgate’s 2025 results make the Board’s DEI preoccupation even more difficult to defend. The Company reported a 25% decline in GAAP diluted earnings per share,¹¹ driven in part by $794 million in after-tax impairment charges tied to its skin health business. North America net sales declined 3.6% in the first quarter of 2025.¹² Shares of CL have fallen approximately 21% from their September 2024 peak of $108.77, and over the trailing 12 months CL has declined roughly 13% — while the S&P 500 has gained approximately 14% over the same period, a gap of nearly 27 percentage points that reflects a market passing judgment on the Company’s leadership and strategic focus.¹³
Shareholders should send the Board an unambiguous message on May 8: the standard for Colgate’s directors must be competence, experience, and integrity — not race, ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation.
NLPC urges shareholders to vote FOR Proposal 4.
Download the Full ReportENDNOTES
1. “2026 Proxy Statement & Notice of Annual Meeting of Stockholders (Page 67),” Colgate-Palmolive Company, March 25, 2026. See https://investor.colgatepalmolive.com/node/44591/html
2. “Independent Board Candidate Qualifications” (viewed March 26, 2026), Colgate-Palmolive Company. See https://www.colgatepalmolive.com/en-us/who-we-are/governance/corporate-governance-policies/independent-board-candidate-qualifications
3. Jeff Green. “Amex, Deere, J&J Abandon Board Diversity Rule, Activist Says,” Bloomberg, Feb. 19, 2026. See https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-02-19/amex-deere-j-j-abandon-board-diversity-rule-activist-says
4. Reia Li. “These 30 Companies Rolled Back DEI Policies, from Amazon to Victoria’s Secret,” Arizona Republic, March 13, 2025. See https://www.yahoo.com/news/30-companies-rolled-back-dei-120236817.html
5. Troy Wolverton. “Uber eliminates DEI goals for executive pay,” San Francisco Examiner, April 1, 2025. See https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/technology/uber-axes-dei-goals-for-executive-pay-as-big-tech-retreats/article_818b4e0f-b070-4b11-994f-5167e6b60231.html
6. Definitive Proxy Statement (DEF 14A), 2025, Walmart, Inc. See https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0000104169/000010416925000055/wmt-20250424.htm
7. Joseph Kaufman, Karen Hsu Kelley, and Leah Malone, “Fifth Circuit Vacates SEC’s Approval of Nasdaq Board Diversity Rules,” Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance, January 12, 2025. See https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2025/01/12/fifth-circuit-vacates-secs-approval-of-nasdaq-board-diversity-rules/
8. Executive Order No. 14173, “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity,” January 21, 2025. See https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/01/31/2025-02097/ending-illegal-discrimination-and-restoring-merit-based-opportunity
9. “US Justice Department Using Fraud Law to Target Companies on DEI, WSJ Reports,” Reuters, December 28, 2025. See https://www.usnews.com/news/us/articles/2025-12-28/us-justice-department-using-fraud-law-to-target-companies-on-dei-wsj-reports
10. “DOJ Pursues DEI Investigations of Federal Contractors,” Mayer Brown LLP, January 6, 2026. See https://www.mayerbrown.com/en/insights/publications/2026/01/doj-pursues-dei-investigations-of-federal-contractors
11. Form 8-K, Colgate-Palmolive Company, January 30, 2026. See https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0000021665/000002166526000003/a4q2025pressreleasetables.htm
12. Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2025, Colgate-Palmolive Company. See https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0000021665/000002166525000020/cl-20250331.htm
13. “Colgate-Palmolive Company (CL) Stock Historical Prices & Data,” Yahoo Finance (viewed March 27, 2026). See https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/CL/history/; and “S&P 500 Historical Data,” Investing.com (viewed March 27, 2026). See https://www.investing.com/indices/us-spx-500-historical-data
(Pictured above: Colgate Chairman/CEO Noel Wallace)
(Post references PX14A6G Notice of exempt solicitation for 2026 Colgate-Palmolive Company annual meeting)
