Target Pride Display – Photo: Phillip Pessar, Flickr
A conservative legal group is suing Target over shareholder losses following a right-wing boycott in protest of the big box retailer’s Pride Month displays featuring LGBTQ-themed merchandise.
The lawsuit, filed last week by America First Legal Foundation, claims Target misled investors when it claimed it was monitoring risks related to its diversity, equity, and inclusion policies.
Harnessing populist anger over LGBTQ visibility, including a handful of items marketed to children, conservatives demanded a boycott of the chain, accusing the company of going “woke” by celebrating June as Pride Month, despite the retailer having sold Pride-themed merchandise in June for years.
Others accused the retailer of seeking to “groom” or “indoctrinate” children into identifying as LGBTQ by promoting Pride-themed items.
Right-wing pundits and influencers recently aimed their sights on companies that embrace Pride Month, with anti-LGBTQ influencer Matt Walsh arguing that conservatives should intentionally “make ‘Pride’ toxic for brands.”
Walsh specifically pointed to Target and Bud Light as consumer boycotts that successfully and negatively impacted the bottom line of “woke” companies.
As a result of the boycott, Target’s stock price has fallen almost 20% since mid-May, reports The Washington Post.
Target employees — many of whom are not involved in managerial decisions — were accosted by conservative TikTokers and influencers in videos that went viral. Stores reported receiving threats of violence, including bomb threats.
The investor at the center of the lawsuit is Brian Craig, a Florida resident who spent around $50,000 for 216.450 shares of Target stock in April 2022. A year later, the value of his holdings had fallen to $34,839, and subsequently dropped to $28,896 by June 14, when the most intense backlash against the store had played out, according to the lawsuit.
On behalf of Craig, America First Legal argues that Target’s loss in market capitalization is a “direct and predictable result of management’s calculated decisions to promote sexualized material to children,” referring to the Pride merchandise.
Filed in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, the lawsuit asserts that acknowledging Pride or LGBTQ existence is inherently “sexual” in nature.
“These false and misleading statement [made by Target about its Pride Month promotions] caused Target’s shareholders to unknowingly support Target’s Board and management in their misuse of investor funds to serve its divisive political and social goals — and ultimately lose billions,” the lawsuit claims.
The lawsuit comes weeks after seven Republican attorneys general wrote to Target’s chairman and CEO, Brian Cornell, warning the company — in a rambling, unfocused screed filled with factually untrue assertions — that it could face legal liability for selling Pride-themed items in stores.
That letter asserted that the Pride Month campaigns may have violated state laws aimed at protecting children from “inappropriate content” and violated the company’s fiduciary duties to shareholders by promoting a divisive social agenda bound to garner backlash.
America First Legal is led by former Trump White House adviser Stephen Miller and has billed itself as a right-wing alternative to the American Civil Liberties Union. The lawsuit continues a pattern of behavior for America First, in which a company’s shareholder losses were presumably linked to right-wing boycotts, are used to pressure those companies into withdrawing their support for the LGBTQ community and causes.
As noted by the Post, America First worked with shareholders of the supermarket giant Kroger in April to sue the Securities and Exchange Commission over the company’s hiring policies, which they claim failed to protect prospective employees from discrimination based on “viewpoint” or “ideology.”
America First Legal has also filed numerous complaints with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission over companies’ diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, which it has claimed encourage discrimination, especially against white male Americans.
While conservatives frequently employ the “go woke, go broke” mantra to argue that embracing left-wing causes does not sit well with the majority of Americans, it remains to be seen whether America First Legal can actually prove that the company’s losses were caused by the boycott.
Some experts noted that Target’s stock price was on the decline long before conservatives zeroed in on the company for its Pride-themed merchandise.
“It is extremely hard to quantify exactly what role the Pride Month backlash had on the stock price,” Neil Saunders, a managing director for retail at GlobalData, a data and analytics firm that provides business research and marketing services, told the Post. “However, given that there is no data to suggest it had a tangible impact on Target’s sales, it seems highly unlikely that it was the primary cause, or even a major cause, of the decline.”
An Idaho jury awarded a drag performer nearly $1.2 million as part of a defamation lawsuit against a blogger who falsely claimed he had exposed himself to children.
Eric Posey, a drag queen who performed at a 2022 Idaho Pride event in Coeur d'Alene, was accused of exposing himself to children during one of three performances that day.
During the performances, Posey, performing under the drag name Mona Liza Million, wore a colorful leotard with shorts underneath and a sparkling rainbow boa -- but he never removed any clothing.
On the day of the performance, organizers and participants were harassed and threatened on social media. Local police in Coeur d'Alene also arrested 31 people, who they claimed were affiliated with the right-wing, white nationalist group Patriot Front, for allegedly conspiring to riot near the city's "Pride in the Park" festival.
A Cranford, New Jersey bakery was overwhelmed with support last week after being threatened with a boycott for displaying a rainbow Pride flag at the store's entrance.
In April, the Sweet n' Fancy Emporium was sent an anonymous letter, from "Citizens of Cranford," complaining about the bakery's Pride flag.
"I noticed the rainbow flag hanging in your window," the letter reads. "I have notified all of my girlfriends who in turn have decided to boycott your store.
"It is not that we despise the flag...it is just we do not want to be associated with crazy left wingers who hate America. We have decided to take our business elsewhere and have blasted your organization all over social media."
In an attempt to avoid backlash from anti-LGBTQ and conservative critics, retail giant Target will not carry Pride merchandise in some stores and will limit the quantity and type of Pride-themed merchandise offered in others.
The company said decisions about where to stock Pride-themed products, including adult apparel, home goods, foods, and beverages, would be based on "guest insights and consumer research."
Target operates about 2,000 stores across the country. While Target has declined to say which stores will carry limited Pride-themed merchandise, its online store will offer a wider assortment of Pride-branded items.
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