AT&T Says it Will Keep DEI Policies in Place Ahead of Merger
Company could face standoff with FCC Chairman Carr, but AT&T already rolled back major DEI policies in March.
WASHINGTON, May 28, 2025 – AT&T has vowed to keep its Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion policies in place ahead of its $5.75 billion merger with Lumen, setting up a potential conflict between the telecommunications giant and the Federal Communications Commission.
In a Thursday statement to Yahoo Finance, AT&T CEO John Stankey declared that “we don’t have to roll back anything” and “our goal is to make sure that every employee that walks through the door of AT&T feels like they belong here and it's a good place for them to work… I'm pretty confident that anybody who examines our practices and how we run the business is going to come to that same conclusion."
Stankey’s confidence may stem from changes the company made earlier this year. In March, the company renamed its chief diversity officer to “vice president of culture and inclusion,” stopped funding the Trevor Project, and no longer carries preferred pronoun pins at its employee stores. In addition, the company ceased participation in the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index, and has replaced its DEI training with “leadership training.”
It remains to be seen if these changes will be enough to satisfy Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr, who has vowed to use the FCC’s regulatory powers to crack down on DEI practices within the telecommunications industry. Recently, the FCC signalled that it would not approve a merger between Verizon and Frontier Communications unless Verizon agreed to end its DEI policies. Verizon’s $20 billion merger with Frontier Communications was eventually approved, hours after it agreed to end its DEI program.
AT&T’s defiance, and the FCC’s response to it, will undoubtedly inform the trajectory of other mergers within the industry, including the recently announced merger between Charter Communications and Cox Communications. Both Charter Communications and Cox Communications did not respond to requests for comment before publication.
The FCC’s use of its regulatory powers to crackdown on DEI initiatives within the telecommunications industry has drawn sharp criticism from some, who argue that such moves are based on opaque standards and set a dangerous precedent.
Carr, on the other hand, insisted in a February interview with Broadband Breakfast that such moves are necessary to end “forms of invidious DEI discrimination that, in my view, would pretty clearly violate the FCC's EEO rules.”
Clarification: This story's sub-headline was modified to include language that AT&T had already rolled back major DEI policies in March. The story has not been modified.
