S&P 500 companies strip diversity data from sustainability reports they keep publishing

Companies kept the page count and changed what the pages hold. Average length held at 69 pages ^[4]. Standalone data tables appeared in 63% of reports, up 6 points from 2025, and greenhouse gas emissions were among the most commonly disclosed metrics ^[14][6]. That growth in data comes alongside the gains in double materiality and ISSB alignment ^[8][10]. The parts that shrank were the announcement, the label and the workforce figures ^[5][6][12].

The board-deck version is Teneo's own summary of its study of 250 S&P 500 reports ^[1]. "Amid this ongoing uncertainty and confusion globally, U.S. companies largely stayed the course on their sustainability reporting in 2026," the authors wrote ^[19][20]. It holds on volume, with a caveat on timing. The 87% figure counts reports published to date, so 13% of companies that had reported by this point last year had not yet reported this year ^[2][1]. Some of that gap may be timing. Teneo said many reports came out later than last year, likely because of additional legal and market review ^[3].

The idea that California's mandate and ISSB-aligned rules abroad are holding reporting in place fits the direction of these numbers. Teneo lists California's mandatory climate disclosure requirements ^[16] and the move by additional jurisdictions toward ISSB-aligned rules ^[18] as context. It puts them next to Republican attorneys general scrutinizing company participation in climate initiatives and plastics and packaging work ^[15]. We do not know yet how much of the persistence is California's doing, because Teneo does not break results out by which companies fall under which regime. The clearest link in the data runs to Europe. Of the companies doing double materiality, 44% referenced the EU's Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive ^[9], and 20% of companies said they were monitoring possible CSRD requirements ^[11].

A skeptic would say this is multinationals doing EU homework and that California is beside the point. The data cannot rule that out, and Teneo's own heading leans that way: international frameworks, it wrote, are "still top of mind for U.S. companies with global operations" ^[21].

In my view, the direction of disclosure followed the frameworks more than the scrutiny, whichever party applied it. Democratic states scrutinized company rollbacks of diversity initiatives ^[17]. Most companies, 72%, kept a dedicated inclusion section, but demographic disclosure fell anyway ^[12]. Republican attorneys general scrutinized climate activity ^[15], and emissions stayed among the most common metrics in data tables that grew ^[14].

For 2027, the trade-off turns on what can be reversed. A title or a press release can come back next year at little cost. A double materiality process or an emissions data series is harder to restart after a gap. Companies kept building both in 2026 while the EU was still working to simplify its regime ^[8][18]. Cutting back that work this quarter saves review effort now. It also means next year's team has to rebuild it if an ISSB-aligned or California rule reaches the company, and additional jurisdictions moved toward ISSB-aligned requirements this year ^[18].