A new report from Alliance for Consumers (AFC) argues that progressive, often climate-change-related, activism and aligned trial lawyers are increasingly using lawsuits not to win big dollars but big changes.
Since the waning years of the Obama administration, AFC said that courtrooms have become the ‘battleground’ for the political left’s campaign to ‘reshape American society’ through ‘strategic litigation.’
AFC analyzed employment discrimination cases, environmental suits and corporate governance litigation and found that the outcomes, or sought-after outcomes, demonstrated a pattern of courtroom strategy meant to deliver policy changes that the left has been unable to achieve through state or federal legislation — particularly regarding DEI and climate.
‘If you really want to understand a substantial portion of why corporate America went really woke, there’s a story that can be told,’ O.H. Skinner, AFC’s executive director, told Fox News Digital.
Skinner said that corporate America believed President Barack Obama would be followed by ‘President Hillary Clinton’ — demonstrating continuity in many of these policy fields — leading to people leaving civil service jobs to join corporate HR and legal departments and bring their policy goals with them.
He alleged that officials in Washington signaled companies could face scrutiny if they did not align with emerging DEI priorities.
‘That’s describing a world where through government lawsuits, but also through private lawsuits, a lot of pressure was being brought on corporate America,’ said Skinner, whose previous work included time with the Arizona attorney general’s office under Mark Brnovich, who led the state’s largest consumer-protection lawsuit against Google over location tracking.
Skinner compared the strategy to ‘plaintiff-shopping’ in class-action litigation, where a firm may be paid millions in settlement while it ‘negotiates a coupon for you’ for the applicant-plaintiffs.
One of the firms cited in the study — which Skinner noted as alleged proof of its political persuasions — had filed a lawsuit against President Donald Trump and former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani on behalf of Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., citing the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 after Jan. 6.
AFC’s report cited a 2019 shareholder-derivative suit brought by Cohen-Milstein against Alphabet — Google’s parent — on behalf of New York union pensioners, alleging it breached fiduciary duties and covered up a data breach and sexual harassment allegations.
The statement from Cohen-Milstein on the suit alleged Alphabet ‘fostered’ a misogynistic ‘‘brogrammer’ culture,’ and later celebrated the settlement ‘fundamentally altering Alphabet’s workforce policies,’ including a $310 million ‘financial commitment to DEI initiatives’ and its position toward ‘workplace equity.’
AFC found the lawsuit ‘functioned as a tool for advocacy groups to push a comprehensive expansion of the DEI agenda at one of the biggest companies with a massive budgetary commitment, all through litigation rather than legislative action or shareholder demand.’
Cohen-Milstein did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
