The opinions expressed here are those of the author, a columnist for Reuters. This column is part of the weekly Reuters Sustainable Finance newsletter, which you can sign up for here https://www.reuters.com/newsletters/reuters-sustainable-finance/

By Ross Kerber

May 7 (Reuters) - With U.S. President Donald Trump railing against corporate diversity, equity and inclusion $(DEI)$ efforts and axing government ones, it may come as no surprise that U.S. companies are reporting fewer race and gender details about their directors.

But the extent of the pullback is striking, said Josh Ramer, whose New Jersey company DiversIQ tracks disclosures for investors and corporate clients.

Among S&P 500 companies making proxy filings this year, 54% gave fewer director demographic details than in 2024; last year only 7% of those companies gave fewer details, Ramer found. He said he had expected a smaller decline and said companies seem anxious about the Trump administration's rhetoric.

"I think it's extreme caution," Ramer said. "There's confusion about what's allowed, and companies just don't want to take the risk of being targeted" for criticism or legal action over their filings, he said.

Ramer's review covered 2,460 U.S. company filings through Friday and updated a previous study.

Examples range across industries including drugmaker Gilead GILD.O, Google parent Alphabet GOOGL.O, defense contractor RTX RTX.N and utility CMS Energy CMS.N.

A representative for the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which enforces federal anti-discrimination laws and is led by a Trump appointee, declined to comment on how the commission views the diversity disclosures.

After years of gains, the share of U.S. board seats going to women and under-represented minorities has stalled by some measures. Disclosure advocates say providing more boardroom details focuses attention on recruitment. Since the #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements, they have successfully pressed for more information about who leads Corporate America.

But this year is different. Top asset managers removed or softened their expectations for boardroom diversity, lessening attention on the issue. When BlackRock BLK.N in its 2025 guidance eliminated a 30% diversity target for boards it had set in late 2021, it noted that 98% of S&P 500 boardrooms already meet that goal.

Boards also are under less pressure to make the disclosures with the demise of Nasdaq's board diversity rule requiring companies to have women and minority directors or to explain why they do not, and to detail who they are.

In line with the policy, Nasdaq-listed Gilead and Alphabet last year both included tables in their proxies describing individual directors' gender identity, race or ethnicity, and whether they identified as LGBTQ+. Neither included the tables this year. Neither company commented for this article.

NYSE-listed defense contractor RTX in 2024 included a more limited "diversity" section in a board biography table, but did not this year. RTX did not respond to questions.

In last year's proxy, CMS included a line showing which directors self-identified as racially or ethnically diverse, female, or LGBTQ+, by name. The line did not appear this year.

A CMS spokesperson said the change was only to simplify the document, not to back away from DEI and noted material on its website.

"We are not scrubbing or revising our commitment to DEI by any means," said the representative, Katie Carey, via e-mail.

(Reporting by Ross Kerber in Boston; Editing by David Gregorio)

((ross.kerber@thomsonreuters.com; (617) 412 0093;))