NEW YORK, Feb 17 - Four New York City public pension funds have launched a federal lawsuit against AT&T, asserting the telecom giant improperly declined to permit a shareholder vote on a proposal seeking disclosure of the racial, ethnic and gender breakdown of its 133,000-employee workforce.
Filed in Manhattan federal court, the complaint contends AT&T relied on a November policy shift by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to justify excluding the funds' proposal from its proxy materials. That SEC change allows companies to assert a "reasonable basis" for omitting shareholder proposals from ballots.
The pension funds maintain that, under SEC regulations, AT&T has no lawful basis to block a vote on the disclosure proposal at the company’s 2026 annual shareholder meeting. The complaint says the exclusion causes "irreparable" harm and asks the court to bar AT&T from soliciting shareholder proxies that omit the funds' measure.
According to the filing, AT&T already submits a workforce diversity breakdown to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on an annual basis. The plaintiffs say the company published that information publicly between 2021 and 2023, but stopped doing so in 2024 without providing an explanation.
AT&T did not immediately reply to requests for comment. A spokesperson for New York City Comptroller Mark Levine also did not immediately respond to a similar inquiry, the complaint notes.
The plaintiffs include the New York City Employees’ Retirement System and funds representing police officers, teachers and other educational employees.
The complaint places the dispute in the context of broader corporate practice and regulatory responses. It notes that each year hundreds of companies seek assurances from the SEC’s Division of Corporation Finance that they will not face enforcement action if they exclude shareholder proposals from proxy ballots. The regulator has historically granted such relief roughly half the time, the filing says.
It also cites statements from SEC Chair Paul Atkins that many shareholder proposals run afoul of Delaware law, the state of incorporation for AT&T and about two-thirds of Fortune 500 companies.
Finally, the complaint observes a trend in which many companies have de-emphasized diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives following an announcement by President Donald Trump of a crackdown on such efforts. The filing references the president’s stated approach, which included a threat of federal civil litigation, made one day after he began his second term.
The suit seeks judicial relief to ensure shareholders can vote on the disclosure proposal at the 2026 meeting and to prevent AT&T from moving forward with proxy solicitations that exclude the funds' request.