Sen. Marco Rubio has unveiled a bill targeting corporations who boycott states by allowing shareholders to sue unless the business can prove that it was “in their shareholders’ best interest.”
According to the Florida Republican’s office, the legislation “would require corporate directors to prove their ‘woke’ corporate actions were in their shareholders’ best interest in order to avoid liability for breach of fiduciary duty in shareholder litigation over corporate actions relating to certain social policies.”
“No more legal tricks that shield these corporate executives from accountability,” Rubio said, according to Florida Politics. “If they really believe that being woke is good for business, they should have to say so — and prove it — under oath in court.”
He added, “Patriotic Americans who love their country and the opportunity it provides should be able to fight back against the growing tyranny of the woke elites running corporate America. These are often nationless corporations that amass fortunes divorced from the fate of our great country while pushing socially destructive, far left policies like boycotts and cancel crusades at home. My Mind Your Own Business Act would put the burden of proof on corporations to show that their far left actions were in shareholders’ best interests, and make corporate directors and officers personally liable if they can’t prove it.”
Rubio said in an interview on Fox Business Network Thursday: “In the case of the ‘woke corporations,’ if a company is going to boycott a state, if a company is going to pull a product off the market because it has an American flag on it and that might offend some people — if a company is going to make these decisions under pressure from either the ‘woke culture’ or some employee uprising internally that is pushing them in this direction, then they should have to justify to their large shareholders why they’ve done it and why that’s in the best interest of the company.
“If they’re sued on those grounds, they should have a higher burden of proof, a higher burden to prove that this is a decision that we have made as a corporation because it’s in the best interest of our business model.”