Alliance Defending Freedom has fundamentally altered how major corporations approach religious liberty and free speech through its pioneering Viewpoint Diversity Score Business Index. The comprehensive evaluation tool, now in its fourth year, represents the most systematic attempt to measure corporate respect for constitutional freedoms across America’s largest publicly traded companies.
The organization’s corporate engagement strategy emerged from a recognition that threats to religious freedom extend beyond government overreach into the private sector. As ADF Senior Counsel and Senior Vice President for Corporate Engagement Jeremy Tedesco explained, “CEOs and business leaders have positions of considerable power. They shouldn’t weaponize their influence or the companies they run to divide Americans or engage in speech censorship or anti-religious bigotry”.
Systematic Corporate Assessment Reveals Concerning Patterns
Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) is an alliance-building, non-profit legal organization committed to protecting religious freedom, free speech, parental rights, marriage and family, and the sanctity of life. Alliance Defending Freedom’s Business Index evaluates corporations across 43 performance indicators, focusing on industries with significant potential to impact individual freedoms. The assessment targets companies that “provide essential banking, payment processing, and cloud services, or that serve as platforms for third-party expression in the digital space”. Major corporations including Meta, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and PayPal fall within this evaluation framework.
The results paint a stark picture of corporate America’s commitment to constitutional principles. In the second annual index, “only two of the 75 major corporations evaluated scored over 25% out of 100% possible in their respect for speech and religion,” indicating that “millions of everyday Americans are at risk of cancellation or punishment for their views”.
Financial institutions represent a particular area of concern. The index identified “policies and practices at JPMorgan Chase, PayPal, Microsoft, Alphabet, and Meta” as threatening “the fundamental freedoms of every American”. These findings have prompted significant regulatory and political attention, with state attorneys general and financial professionals raising concerns about discriminatory practices.
Measurable Progress Through Engagement Strategy
Despite the concerning baseline results, Alliance Defending Freedom’s systematic approach has generated demonstrable improvements in corporate behavior. Eight companies showed “year-over-year improvement” in the 2023 Business Index, including “large jumps by Fidelity Information Services (50% vs. 18% last year) and M&T Bank (25% vs. 14% last year) largely because they participated in the survey portion of the Business Index”.
The organization’s methodology combines evaluation with practical solutions. Alongside scoring companies, “Viewpoint Diversity Score will provide companies with workable solutions through model policies, research, toolkits, polling, and constructive dialogue”. This approach creates pathways for corporations to improve their practices rather than simply identifying problems.
The Business Index serves as “a tool shareholders can use to substantively engage with their companies,” providing both research and “actionable steps shareholders can call upon company leadership to take”. This framework has enabled shareholders to file successful resolutions addressing viewpoint discrimination at major corporations.
Regulatory and Political Impact
Alliance Defending Freedom’s corporate engagement work has generated significant political momentum. Following the Business Index results, “Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron led a letter signed by 19 state attorneys general calling on Chase to prevent viewpoint discrimination,” while “Nebraska State Treasurer John Murante led a group of 14 state treasurers calling on Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon to be transparent with customers and shareholders”.
The organization achieved a notable regulatory victory when “the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission ruled against Chase and allowed [shareholder David Bahnsen] to present his proposal” addressing debanking concerns, marking “the first time the SEC recognized the importance of debanking”.
The Heritage Foundation recognized the significance of this work by awarding Alliance Defending Freedom “one of its inaugural Innovative Prizes in 2022 to support the creation of the Viewpoint Diversity Score Business Index.” Heritage Vice President Andrew Olivastro emphasized that business leaders must be held accountable when they “focus on divisive, woke political agendas” rather than advancing civil liberties.
The Business Index methodology reflects Alliance Defending Freedom’s broader mission to secure constitutional protections across all sectors of American society. Through this corporate engagement work, the organization seeks to “equip companies to take concrete steps toward respecting viewpoint diversity in their business practices, workforces, and public affairs.”
Alliance Defending Freedom’s systematic approach to corporate accountability represents a significant evolution in constitutional advocacy. By creating measurable standards for corporate behavior and providing practical solutions for improvement, the organization has established a framework that extends First Amendment protections into the private sector. The demonstrated ability to generate both corporate policy changes and regulatory attention suggests this methodology will continue influencing how major corporations approach religious liberty and free speech considerations.
For more information about ADF’s corporate engagement work, visit viewpointdiversityscore.org.
