In 2025, a growing number of American employers rewired how they handle diversity, equity, and inclusion, sometimes trimming budgets, sometimes closing teams outright. The shift followed years of public debate and a legal environment that became more contested, with advocates and critics arguing over what workplace fairness requires. Some executives treated DEI as a reputational risk and a litigation risk, especially when programs were described in ways that sounded like quotas. Others folded the work into standard HR functions, renamed teams, or narrowed programs to training, compliance, and employee support. Employees, customers, and investors then tried to interpret each move as a moral signal, even when the internal change was mostly operational. At the same time, many workers still wanted straightforward answers: who gets mentored, who gets recruited, how complaints get handled, and whether promotion decisions get audited for bias.
That demand for detail is why wording matters, and why the public record matters even more. The company list that follows sticks to actions confirmed in public filings, corporate statements, and reporting from outlets with established editorial standards. Where a firm uses softer language such as “refocus” or “evolve,” the analysis looks for concrete signs: eliminated roles, closed offices, cancelled targets, or discontinued reporting. The result is a record of what changed in 2025, and how executives explained those decisions.
What DEI Means, and Who It Tries to Serve
DEI is shorthand for diversity, equity, and inclusion, a set of workplace practices that sits alongside, not above, US civil rights law. In HR terms, “diversity” refers to representation across backgrounds and identities, and “inclusion” refers to building everyday structures where employees can contribute, be heard, and succeed based on merit and performance. Equity is the term that causes the most disagreement, partly because employers use it in different ways, but in workplace practice it usually focuses on removing barriers that cause equally qualified people to get different opportunities, for example inconsistent recruiting pipelines, opaque promotion criteria, or unequal access to high-visibility projects.
Who DEI aims to help depends on the organization, but the most common focus is on groups that have historically faced exclusion or bias in US workplaces, including women, racial and ethnic minorities, people with disabilities, veterans, and LGBTQ employees, while still being obligated to follow laws that protect everyone from discrimination.
The history also has no single start date. Modern corporate DEI grew out of the same legal and institutional roots as equal employment opportunity, especially Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which created the EEOC and bars employment discrimination based on protected traits such as race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. In the federal contracting space, Executive Order 11246, signed in 1965, required nondiscrimination and affirmative action obligations for many federal contractors, and later administrations built additional federal workforce initiatives that used the language of diversity and inclusion.
In 2011, Executive Order 13583 explicitly directed a coordinated federal initiative to promote diversity and inclusion in the federal workforce, which helped normalize that vocabulary in public administration and, indirectly, in private sector HR. By the late 2010s and early 2020s, many companies used “DEI” as an umbrella label for a mix of activities: recruiting outreach, employee resource groups, training, pay equity reviews, complaint handling, supplier diversity goals, and public reporting on representation.
The misunderstanding tends to start when DEI is treated as a single diversity program with a single intent. Some employees and commentators hear “equity” and assume it means guaranteed outcomes or race-based preferences, while some corporate messaging blurred the line by promising numerical targets without explaining the decision rules behind them. Legally, that confusion matters because Title VII restricts employment decisions motivated by protected characteristics, and legal commentators have noted that recent court battles, including the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision on race-conscious college admissions, have emboldened challenges to private-sector DEI even though the admissions ruling does not directly govern employers. In practice, many lawful DEI efforts look less like preference and more like process: consistent job criteria, better documentation, broader recruiting, structured interviews, and equal access to development, all of which can reduce bias without turning hiring into a demographic math problem.
Put plainly, DEI can mean anything from compliance work to culture work, and public debate often collapses those categories. That is why, when a company says it is ending DEI, the only useful next question is what, exactly, is being ended.
What Counts as “Ended” in 2025 for This Company List
Companies almost never announce that DEI is finished in one clear statement. Because of that, the list uses a simple rule. A company is included only if there is a verifiable action in 2025 that removed a central DEI program, office, or target. This can include closing a DEI department, cutting senior DEI roles, ending representation targets or incentives, dropping supplier diversity goals, stopping public reporting that had been framed as a core promise, or rewriting policies to remove DEI specific requirements. A name change alone does not count, since many companies shifted wording while continuing most of the same work.
A company can still qualify even if it kept some related efforts. Things like employee resource groups or anti harassment training may remain. What matters is whether the 2025 change removed the main structure that had coordinated DEI strategy, staffing, and measurement.
The sourcing rules are strict because public explanations often do not reflect the actual decisions companies make. Many DEI decisions happen internally before anything is announced. When companies do speak publicly, the language is often softened or vague, and commentators sometimes repeat those statements without checking the original records. To avoid confusion, each company entry is based on at least one primary source, such as an SEC filing, an official statement, or a dated internal memo reported by a reliable outlet, and it notes when the change occurred.
The year 2025 is used as a cutoff because federal policy adjusted and changed how agencies and contractors approached compliance. Executive Order 14173 revoked Executive Order 11246 and directed agencies to wind down federal DEI programs. That move led many corporate legal teams to reassess risk and timing. It does not explain every rollback, but it helps explain why many announcements appeared early in 2025 and why companies began using similar language about merit and nondiscrimination.
When a company “ended” their diversity program, that term is used as an administrative label, not a statement about beliefs. A company may close an office for cost, legal, political, or strategic reasons. How employees experience the workplace depends on what replaces that office. For this reason, the profiles focus on how decisions were carried out, what was removed, what remained, and what the company said it would do next under current law.
Amazon (January 2025)
Amazon did not announce a single dramatic shutdown, it handled the change like a clean-up project. The company told employees it was winding down older DEI programs and materials, and the public picture became clearer in early 2025 when reporting surfaced the internal memo and what it meant in practice. What people noticed next was less about a headline and more about signals, including DEI language getting stripped back in some of Amazon’s public reporting. In plain terms, Amazon moved away from DEI as a branded set of programs and messaging, and toward a tighter, more defensible posture where the company can still talk about fair hiring and opportunity without owning a big DEI banner.
Meta (January 2025)
Meta’s pivot was clearer and sharper because it came with direct program changes. The company told employees it was ending DEI programs tied to hiring and training, and it also pulled back on DEI-related supplier efforts. Meta also dismantled the dedicated DEI team structure, and its Chief Diversity Officer, Maxine Williams, shifted into a role focused on accessibility and engagement. Another big change was removing internal approaches like representation goals and the “diverse slate” hiring practice, which had been a visible part of how Meta talked about progress. So even if Meta still enforces equal opportunity rules and anti-harassment policy, the company stepped away from the tools and targets that made DEI measurable and public.
McDonald’s (January 2025)
McDonald’s took a different route, it focused on targets and supplier commitments. The company said it was retiring aspirational representation goal-setting and ending a DEI pledge that had asked suppliers to build DEI strategies and track progress. It also realigned its internal team naming toward “Global Inclusion,” which signals a reframing instead of a full retreat from workplace inclusion as a concept. Compared with tech companies that cut whole DEI functions, McDonald’s is more of a “remove the formal commitments” story. The practical takeaway is that the company backed away from public-facing goal structures, while keeping parts of the broader people-and-culture work under a new label.
Target (January 2025)
Target’s rollback was one of the more concrete ones because it touched goals, a signature initiative, and outside reporting. Internally, the company said it was ending its three year DEI goals and closing out its REACH initiative, the umbrella it had used to talk about racial equity commitments and supplier plans. It also stopped participating in external diversity-focused surveys, including the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index, and it renamed its “Supplier Diversity” team to “Supplier Engagement,” which signals turning away from identity-based supplier commitments and toward a broader procurement lens. The “why” Target gave was blunt in corporate language, an “evolving external landscape,” which is usually shorthand for political heat, legal risk, and the cost of being a target in public fights. Target also had fresh institutional memory of what happens when social issues collide with retail operations, after its 2023 Pride merchandise controversy and the backlash that followed. In other words, this was Target choosing less exposure and fewer measurable promises, even if it continues to talk about inclusion in general terms.
Accenture (February 2025)
Accenture did not frame its move as shutting the door on inclusion, it framed it as removing goals and programs that could become legal liabilities. Inside the company, leadership told employees it was “sunsetting” the global diversity and inclusion goals it set in 2017, and it was also phasing out certain career development programs designed for specific demographic groups. A practical change that employees feel fast is that DEI goals stopped being used as a performance measure for staff, so managers are no longer evaluated against those targets in the same way. Accenture also paused submissions to external diversity benchmarking surveys, which reduces outside scorekeeping and reduces headlines tied to rankings. The stated reason was an internal review paired with compliance concerns tied to new US executive orders and the shifting legal environment. Put simply, Accenture kept the language of merit and talent, but removed the scorecard and the programs that were easiest for critics to challenge.
Read More: Amazon Eyes Robot Workforce: Leaks Suggest Plans to Replace Hundreds of Thousands of Employees
IBM (April 2025)
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IBM’s change read like a reset, not a rename. Reporting described IBM telling employees it would no longer have a DEI department and that it eliminated its long-running Diversity Council, which had been part of the company’s internal architecture for decades. It also stepped back from several specific initiatives that were directly associated with DEI branding, including allyship efforts, and it pulled away from at least one major external benchmark, the Human Rights Campaign workplace index. On the public side, IBM scrubbed a lot of DEI messaging from its website, which is often what companies do when they want fewer public hooks for critics to grab.
The reasons, as described in coverage of the internal communication, centered on legal considerations and what the company called “inherent tensions” in practicing inclusion, language that usually appears when counsel is trying to narrow exposure. IBM also faced ongoing scrutiny and litigation tied to allegations around hiring or employment practices, which helps explain why it moved beyond messaging changes and into structural ones. What remained, based on reporting, was a more limited set of employee support and inclusion efforts that could be defended as workplace practice rather than demographic targeting.
Google (February 2025)
Google’s rollback landed in two places employees and investors actually read, an internal memo and the company’s annual filing language. The operational change was ending DEI hiring targets, meaning Google stopped using aspirational goals that were designed to increase representation in hiring and leadership. The company also removed a line from its 10-K that had explicitly framed DEI as part of “everything we do,” which is a clear signal that leadership wanted less public exposure tied to that promise.
The stated reason was compliance risk, Google pointed to recent court decisions, new US executive orders, and its status as a federal contractor, which creates extra scrutiny and potential penalties if the government decides a policy crosses the line. Inside the company, the memo framed this as a shift toward equal opportunity without targets, plus a review of other programs and trainings that could be seen as risky or low-impact. Net result, Google kept the language of fairness, but it removed the goal-driven machinery that made DEI easy to measure and easy to attack.
Citigroup (February 2025)
Citi made changes that hit the mechanics of hiring and the scoreboard the company had put in writing. The bank said it was dropping “aspirational representation goals,” except where local law requires them, and it also scrapped requirements for diverse candidate slates in interviews, along with rules around diverse interview panels. Another visible change was the rebrand of its “diversity, equity and inclusion and talent management” group to “talent management and engagement,” which signals that DEI was no longer going to be the headline label for how Citi talks about people strategy.
The reason Citi pointed to was the external policy environment and direct signals from the White House, essentially a move to reduce legal and political exposure for programs that could be framed as preference-based. For employees, this kind of rollback changes what managers are asked to do day to day, because the process requirements that force broader candidate pools and more structured panels get removed or weakened. Net result, Citi stepped back from goals and guardrails that were designed to drive representation outcomes, and it replaced them with a more general talent framework that is easier to defend.
Wells Fargo (February 2025)
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Wells Fargo’s transition was narrowly defined but meaningful in practice, it ended a policy that required a diverse slate of candidates in the first round of interviews for senior-level roles in the United States. That policy affects who even gets in the room early, which can influence the entire funnel for leadership hiring. The public reporting described it as part of a broader retreat by major financial institutions after political and regulatory criticism of corporate DEI, with banks trying to get ahead of lawsuits and government scrutiny. Wells Fargo had rolled out several inclusion-linked initiatives in 2020, including tying executive compensation to inclusion goals, so this 2025 change reads like a reset away from formal diversity-related requirements in senior recruiting.
The “why” is mostly risk management, banks are heavily regulated, and leadership hiring policies are high-visibility targets for critics who argue DEI crosses into illegal preference. Net result, Wells Fargo removed a structural hiring requirement that had been designed to widen top-of-house candidate pools, and it moved closer to a standard recruiting approach that is less likely to trigger challenges.
The 2025 Reset, and What Employees Will Notice Next
In 2025, a lot of companies made the same kind of move, they kept equal opportunity language, and they backed away from DEI programs that came with targets, scorecards, and public promises. Inside the workplace, that usually shows up in three places: who owns the work now that dedicated DEI teams are gone, what hiring and promotion rules get enforced once diverse-slate requirements disappear, and whether anyone is still tracking outcomes in a way leaders have to answer for. The public-facing version is cleaner too, fewer benchmarks, fewer surveys, and fewer bold statements in annual reports that can be pulled into a headline or a legal filing.
The reasons companies gave were mostly risk management, legal uncertainty, political heat, and the cost of defending programs that critics frame as preference. For employees, the practical question is not whether a company still says the right words, it is whether managers are still required to use consistent criteria, document decisions, and open up access to career-building work. When DEI gets pulled out by the roots, the best case is that those basics get stronger under a different label, and the worst case is that accountability fades because there is no longer a dedicated team, a target, or a system that forces follow-through.
Disclaimer: This article was written by the author with the assistance of AI and reviewed by an editor for accuracy and clarity.