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Diversity

Target's DEI Rollback 2025: How the REACH Program Ended

On January 24, 2025, Target ended its three-year DEI goals and REACH and left the HRC index. A 40-day boycott followed, and first-quarter comparable sales fell 3.8%.

By The WokeCorp Team Updated October 15, 2026
The entrance of a Target store in Northern Virginia, with the red bullseye logo
A Target store in Northern Virginia. Target ended its three-year DEI goals and its REACH initiative on January 24, 2025, saying it needed to stay in step with the evolving external landscape. · Photo: Brainulator9 via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

After George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis in 2020, Target, a Minneapolis company, launched Racial Equity Action and Change, or REACH. It already set three-year diversity goals on a rolling basis, and had for nearly a decade.

On January 24, 2025, Target ended both. “We understand the importance of staying in step with the evolving external landscape,” Kiera Fernandez, its chief community impact and equity officer, wrote to employees.

Key findings

  • Target concluded its three-year DEI goals and said it would not set them publicly again.
  • It ended REACH, a step it said had been planned for 2025.
  • It renamed its supplier diversity team supplier engagement and stopped taking part in outside surveys, including the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index.
  • Pastor Jamal Bryant led a 40-day fast from Target starting on Ash Wednesday, March 5, 2025.
  • First-quarter 2025 comparable sales fell 3.8%, and CEO Brian Cornell named the boycott among several causes.
  • Target had already pulled some Pride merchandise in 2023 and stopped stocking Pride products in every store in 2024.

The earlier retreats

The January 2025 decision was not Target’s first step back. In 2023 it removed some Pride Month merchandise after online complaints and in-store confrontations that it said threatened employees’ well-being. The next year it decided not to stock Pride products at every US store. Back in 2016, after customers threatened a boycott over its transgender-inclusive bathroom policy, it added single-toilet bathrooms with locking doors in more stores.

Each time the company measured pressure from one side against the cost from the other. The 2025 announcement applied the same test to its racial equity commitments.

The grocery section of a Target store, with long aisles under bright lights

The grocery section of a Target store. Target operates approximately 1,900 stores across the US. Its annual Pride merchandise collection had been one of the most extensive in American retail before the 2023 controversy. Photo: Lovable98158 via Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 4.0.

What Target ended, and what it kept

The memo concluded the rolling three-year goals, which covered hiring and promoting women and racial minorities and recruiting suppliers owned by people of color, women, LGBTQ+ people, veterans and people with disabilities. REACH ended on the schedule Target said it had set. The supplier team kept working under a new name, which Target said reflected a broader focus that includes small businesses.

Leaving the HRC index stands out. Getting companies off the index and away from Pride sponsorships had been an explicit goal of DEI opponents, so the move answered those campaigns directly. Target also said it would review its partnerships to make sure they connect to business objectives, without naming any.

What happened after Target ended its DEI programs in 2025?

Bryant, pastor of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Stonecrest, Georgia, asked at least 100,000 Christians of any race to fast from Target for the 40 days of Lent, starting March 5, 2025, and to sign a pledge at targetfast.org. The demands included restoring the DEI programs and completing the $2 billion investment tied to Target’s post-2020 initiatives.

Target’s results moved in the same period. Fourth-quarter 2024 comparable sales, reported in March 2025, grew 1.5%. First-quarter 2025 comparable sales, for the quarter ended May 3, fell 3.8%. Cornell cited several reasons, including weaker spending on nonessential goods, softer consumer confidence, tariffs and the boycott, and the company did not say how much of the drop each one caused.

A wooden cross against a bright blue sky

The 40-day Lenten boycott organized by Reverend Jamal Bryant mobilized Black congregations across the US. Boycott organizers framed the action as a response to Target’s ending REACH, a program launched specifically in response to Black community pressure in 2020. Photo: Pixabay via Pexels. Pexels License.

A 2023 Supreme Court decision ending affirmative action in college admissions encouraged conservative groups to bring or threaten lawsuits against corporate initiatives such as employee resource groups and hiring practices aimed at historically marginalized groups. The decision did not rule on private employment, but it changed the risk calculation companies made about their own programs. The new administration’s January 2025 orders added federal pressure in the same week Target announced its change.

Costco, the counter-example

The day before Target’s announcement, 98% of Costco shareholders rejected a proposal from the National Center for Public Policy Research aimed at getting the retailer to roll back its diversity hiring practices. Costco’s board defended its DEI work as good for business. Two national retailers with broad customer bases reached opposite positions within 24 hours.

The WokeCorp assessment

The commitment. Nearly a decade of public three-year goals and a named racial equity initiative launched in the company’s own city.

The reversal. The January 2025 memo ended the goals, closed REACH, renamed the supplier team and pulled Target out of the HRC index. The stated reason was the evolving external landscape.

The strategic question. The 2016, 2023 and 2024 retreats showed the pattern before 2025: under organized pressure, Target weighed one set of customers against another and stepped back. The boycott and the first-quarter slump showed that stepping back carried its own cost.

Woman standing in a red shopping cart in a retail store aisle

Target’s retail customer base became a focal point during the 2023 boycott campaign following the company’s Pride merchandise rollback. Photo: Cleyton Ewerton via Pexels. Pexels License.

See The Great DEI Retreat: Corporate Rollbacks in 2024-2025 for the broader context.

Sources

  • Associated Press via MPR News, January 24, 2025. Read October 2026.
  • WSMV / Gray News on the Target fast, March 6, 2025. Read October 2026.
  • Straight Arrow News on first-quarter 2025 results, May 22, 2025. Read October 2026.
  • The Motley Fool on Target’s first half of 2025, July 13, 2025. Read October 2026.
  • NPR on the Costco shareholder vote, January 23, 2025. Read October 2026.