Best Buy offers to screen LGBTQ nonprofit donations after conservative pressure, filing shows

In an email exchange with a conservative think tank, tucked into an SEC filing, the electronics retailer offered to screen its employee groups’ donations to LGBTQ causes.

Best Buy offered to screen donations from its employee resource groups going to LGBTQ causes following pressure from a conservative think tank that holds shares in the company, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing made public this week.

The SEC filing contains a monthslong email exchange between the National Center for Public Policy Research, which describes itself as a “nonpartisan, free-market conservative think tank,” and Best Buy. The dialogue, which hasn’t been previously reported, shows how the center said it would make “a splash” unless the consumer electronics giant moved in favor of its demands.

In some of the last correspondence in the filing, Best Buy noted that it allows its employee resource groups “some discretion to directly support organizations of their choosing” but added that “any such contributions would be screened to ensure they do not advocate or support the causes or agendas you have identified as concerning.” One of the causes the NCPPR cited was transgender care for minors, which the group falsely described as an attempt to “mutilate the reproductive organs of children.”