WASHINGTON – Alliance Defending Freedom released its fifth-annual Viewpoint Diversity Score Business Index Thursday, expanding the field to 150 major companies and reorganizing the methodology around 30 policy-focused indicators spanning the market, workplace, and public square. Insperity led the Index with a top overall score of 67%, and seven companies scored above 50%, showing that stronger protections for free speech and religious freedom are achievable across different sectors.
In the past year, major corporations made more than 55 policy and practice changes in response to shareholders who cited ADF’s Index. Those improvements in a single year show that the Index is not merely measuring problems, it is helping companies fix them.
“Corporate America is finally starting to reckon with the cost of vague policies that leave customers, employees, and charities exposed to viewpoint discrimination,” said ADF Senior Counsel and Senior Vice President of the Counter Censorship Task Force Jeremy Tedesco. “Insperity and the other leaders on this year’s Index prove that clear, enforceable protections for free speech and religious freedom are entirely compatible with running a successful business. We look forward to productive conversations with the rest of corporate America, providing actionable data and model policies to help them protect their employees and customers from censorship and viewpoint discrimination.”
The redesigned Index scores publicly traded companies in finance, tech, and software services based on whether they use clear rules, protect free speech and religious exercise, apply their standards consistently, and avoid imposing contested beliefs on customers, employees, and charitable partners. Major corporations like Bank of America and Microsoft have taken important steps over the past year to prevent future viewpoint-based discrimination against customers and employees, while Mastercard, Texas Instruments, and Salesforce each responded to shareholder engagement by removing the Southern Poverty Law Center’s “hate list” as a screening tool from employee charitable-giving programs.
The overall improvements from major corporations are reflected in the individual company scores on the 2026 Index. Insperity’s top score was followed by East West Bancorp (60%), Cullen/Frost Bankers (54%), Bank of America (53%), Palantir Technologies (52%), Progressive Insurance (52%), and Euronet Worldwide (51%).
The Index’s market benchmarks found that vague terms of service remain the largest risk to customers and vendors. A total of 115 companies—77% of the Index—received zero credit because their policies let the company deny customers access to a core product or service based on subjective terms like “inappropriate,” “objectionable,” or simply the company’s “sole discretion.” Only 11 companies earned full marks. That includes East West Bancorp, which revised its online banking terms to remove vague restrictions on “bigoted” and “offensive” speech.
Seven companies—Bank of America, Dell Technologies, JPMorgan Chase, Meta, Microsoft, NCR Atleos, and Popular—disclosed strong protections for vendors against religious or ideological discrimination. But such protections remain rare: 77 companies received zero credit, failing to provide comparable safeguards for their business partners.
The Index continues to power ADF’s shareholder engagement coalition, which has secured commitments or clarifications this year from Bank of America, BlackRock, AT&T, Regions, Mastercard, NVIDIA, Meta, Wells Fargo, Salesforce, and Microsoft to remove religious exclusions, drop reliance on the now-indicted SPLC’s “hate list,” or adopt equal charitable criteria. Capital One confirmed it is no longer a sponsor of the Human Rights Campaign or a participant in its Corporate Equality Index, part of a broader decline in CEI participation that has included companies such as Meta, American Express, PNC Bank, Delta, Boeing, and Lockheed Martin.
Key takeaways of the 2026 Index include:
- 150 companies were scored across 30 policy indicators.
- More than 55 corporate policy and practice changes over the past year show that shareholder engagement tied to the Index is producing significant reform.
- 77% of companies (115 of 150) continue to rely on vague or subjective service policies that could be used to cancel, deplatform, or debank customers based on viewpoint.
“The companies we all rely on every day for banking, insurance, technology, and more have enormous influence over whether Americans can speak, have access to financial services, and do business according to their convictions,” said ADF Senior Counsel Noah Nash. “The Index gives investors, employees, and customers the receipts. We’re hopeful that companies continue on the trendlines we’re seeing, cutting ties with groups that openly advocate for censorship and religious discrimination and adopting policies that respect the God-given freedoms of every employee and customer.”
Visit www.ViewpointDiversityScore.com to see the full results of the 2026 Index.
Alliance Defending Freedom is an alliance-building, non-profit legal organization committed to protecting religious freedom, free speech, parental rights, and the sanctity of life.
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