Article 7: Equality before the law and equal protection
Necessary
Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes. Others must also act.
Why shareholder democracy is necessary
Equal protection of the law depends partly on whether the private systems people rely on, credit scoring, mortgage underwriting and facial-recognition software, treat people evenhandedly. Investors have pushed banks to open their books. A Service Employees International Union-led proposal at Wells Fargo won 36 percent support for a racial-equity audit in 2022, up from 13 percent the year before, and the bank then commissioned law firm Covington and Burling to conduct one. A parallel proposal at Chevron, led by the Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia, won 48 percent support, but investors said the resulting audit examined only hiring and philanthropy and skipped the community questions they had asked about. At Amazon, Harrington Investments' 2019 push for a civil-rights review of its Rekognition facial-recognition software, backed publicly by the ACLU, was voted down. A separate, unresolved federal lawsuit alleges Wells Fargo's mortgage-underwriting algorithm produced higher denial rates for Black and Latino applicants.
How this was scoredNecessary
Necessary. Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes. Others must also act.
Equal protection turns partly on whether banks, insurers and technology vendors apply credit, hiring and legal-risk decisions evenhandedly. That is corporate conduct investors can reach directly. But courts, regulators and legislatures still define and enforce the underlying legal protections, so corporate change is necessary rather than sufficient on its own.
Company resistance to independent audits, seen in how Chevron structured the audit shareholders asked for and in Amazon's defeat of a civil-rights review of its facial-recognition sales, narrows what investors can verify, but we found no single corporate lobbying campaign blocking equal-protection law outright.
2 and 1, higher of the two, gives Necessary
Every rating is the higher of two answers, one for what companies do and one for what they spend to stop the outcome, because the same vote reaches both. See the full method.
Sources
- Mortgage underwriting algorithm at heart of Wells Fargo's racial disparity lawsuit, HousingWire, 2024-06
- Wells Fargo agrees to racial equity audit, American Banker, 2022
- Chevron's "Racial Equity Audit" Fails to Satisfy Shareholders' Request, Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, 2022
- Notice of Exempt Solicitation, Chevron Corporation racial equity audit proposal, Investor Advocates for Social Justice via SEC EDGAR, 2022-05
- Amazon shareholders reject facial recognition sale ban to governments, TechCrunch, 2019-05-22
What civil society organizations are helping owners on this
Filed the racial equity audit shareholder proposal at Wells Fargo through its Pension Plans Master Trust, winning 36% support in 2022.
Wells Fargo agrees to racial equity audit, American Banker, 2022
Represented lead filer Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia on the 2022 racial equity audit proposal at Chevron, which won 48% support.
Publicly rallied investor support for the 2019 shareholder proposals seeking limits and civil-rights review of Amazon's facial-recognition sales.
Amazon shareholders reject facial recognition sale ban to governments, TechCrunch, 2019-05-22
2 campaigns on record
Commission a third-party racial equity audit examining how the bank's policies and practices affect communities of color.
Result: 36% support, up from 13% the prior year
Wells Fargo commissioned law firm Covington & Burling to conduct a third-party racial equity audit and committed to publishing results by the end of 2023.
Commission an independent study of whether Rekognition facial-recognition technology threatens or violates civil rights and disproportionately targets communities of color, immigrants and activists.
Result: Rejected; precise vote share not published in sources reviewed, defeat attributed in part to Jeff Bezos's concentrated voting control
we found no documented change to Amazon's Rekognition sales policy that sources attribute to this vote.
Amazon shareholders reject facial recognition sale ban to governments, TechCrunch
Related subjects on other maps
How this rating was made
Every item on every one of our maps is read against one question: how far does this depend on the people who own companies voting their values? We answer it twice, once for what companies do and once for what they spend to stop the outcome, and take whichever answer is higher, since the same vote reaches both. The score carries its reasoning and its sources so that a reader can check it rather than take it.
- Pivotal. Owners voting their values can deliver most of the outcome.
- Necessary. Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes, and others must also act.
- Helpful. Owners voting their values help, and others carry most of it.
- Independent. This moves without owners. Other levers carry it.
The advocacy record on this page holds only what a source we opened says happened. Where we searched and found nothing, the page says so rather than leaving a silence. Where a campaign names a filer the source does not name, it says that too. Ratings are ours; the list of subjects is Universal Declaration of Human Rights's, and we link to their original.
How we score dependency, in full.