Appeals Court Strikes Down Nasdaq’s Board-Diversity Rules

A federal appeals court rejected Nasdaq’s yearslong push to set racial and gender targets for the boards of its listed companies, dealing a major blow to one of most prominent efforts to promote diversity in corporate America…

The Nasdaq rules vacated by Wednesday’s ruling “strip people of their individuality and force companies to classify them based on gender, race, ethnicity, and sexuality,” said Sheng Li, litigation counsel for the New Civil Liberties Alliance, one of the groups that sued over the rules.

The appeals court “correctly recognized that neither SEC nor Nasdaq has any business regulating the composition of corporate boards along these controversial demographic dimensions,” Li said…

December 11, 2024

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Originally Published in The Wall Street Journal