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Goldman Sachs will remove race, gender identity, ethnicity and sexual orientation from the criteria its board uses to evaluate director candidates, completing a year-long dismantling of diversity commitments that once defined the bank’s public image under CEO David Solomon — who previously called DEI a “top priority” for the firm.
What Exactly Is Changing
Goldman’s board governance committee currently assesses potential directors against four primary criteria, one of which includes a broad definition of diversity covering viewpoints, professional background and military service, alongside a subcategory labelled “other demographics” that lists race, gender identity, ethnicity and sexual orientation. The committee plans to strike the “other demographics” subcategory while retaining the broader diversity language around experience and perspective, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, citing people familiar with the matter. The board is expected to approve the revised wording later this month.
How It Happened
The change follows a shareholder proposal submitted in September 2025 by the National Legal and Policy Center, a conservative activist nonprofit that holds a small stake in Goldman. The NLPC asked the bank to eliminate DEI-related criteria from its board selection process and requested the proposal be included in Goldman’s proxy statement ahead of the annual shareholder meeting. Goldman subsequently informed the NLPC that it intended to revise its criteria. The two parties signed a formal agreement under which the nonprofit withdrew its proposal.
The NLPC has made similar arguments to other companies, contending that factoring demographic characteristics into board candidate assessments increases legal exposure to discrimination claims — an argument that has gained significant traction since the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which struck down race-conscious university admissions as unconstitutional. While that decision addressed higher education directly, corporate lawyers have warned that the legal reasoning extends to hiring and governance practices across the private sector.
A Year of Unwinding
The board criteria revision is the latest in a sequence of moves that have systematically stripped diversity commitments from Goldman’s operations. In early 2025, the bank ended its four-year-old policy requiring companies to have at least two diverse board members before Goldman would underwrite their initial public offerings — a rule that had been one of Wall Street’s most visible corporate diversity pledges. The firm subsequently removed an entire “diversity and inclusion” section from its annual regulatory filing.
Goldman also reworked its One Million Black Women initiative, a multibillion-dollar programme aimed at investing in Black businesswomen and nonprofit leaders, stripping explicit references to race from the programme’s language. Anti-DEI shareholder proposals were put forward during last year’s proxy season but did not secure majority support — yet the board moved to pre-empt this year’s vote by negotiating directly with the NLPC.
The Pressure Campaign
Goldman’s retreat reflects a corporate environment reshaped by both judicial and executive action. President Donald Trump signed an executive order last year directing federal departments to initiate civil investigations into corporate DEI programmes, arguing they constitute discrimination. For Goldman and other Wall Street firms that maintain substantial federal contracting relationships, the order raised direct compliance risks.
The bank is not alone in recalibrating. Morgan Stanley and Citigroup have already softened their diversity commitments and adjusted public-facing language around inclusion programmes. But Goldman’s decision carries outsized significance given the firm’s role as a cultural bellwether for the financial sector. When Goldman imposed IPO diversity requirements in 2020, dozens of banks followed. Its reversal signals permission for the rest of the industry to do the same.
What Remains
The revised criteria will still reference diversity in terms of professional experience, viewpoints and background — meaning the committee is not formally abandoning all consideration of candidate variety. Whether that distinction proves meaningful in practice will depend on how the governance committee interprets the narrowed language when actual vacancies arise. Goldman declined to comment on the changes. The NLPC did not respond to requests for comment.
Sources: Financialpost, Benzinga, Nypost
