Target CEO Stands by Transgender Bathroom Policy Despite $10B in Losses

Target CEO Brian Cornell defended the company's transgender bathroom policy decision to shareholders while also denying that the $10 billion in losses suffered since had anything to do with the controversial decision, Breitbart reported.

The new policy, instituted seven weeks ago, allows transgender men and women to use the bathrooms and changing rooms of the gender they identify with at all Target stores.

That decision has been the impetus behind a boycott of Target by about 1 million Americans.

"We're a company that believes strongly in diversity and inclusion," LifeSiteNews quoted Cornell at Wednesday's shareholder meeting in Costa Mesa, Calif. "We're a company that is very guest-centered."

Justin Danhof, director of the National Center Free Enterprise Project, attended the meeting and has been a vocal critic of the retailer's decision to open up bathrooms.

"Target's shareholder meeting was appalling from beginning to end," Danhof said. "Liberal corporate leaders such as Cornell throw around the words 'diversity' and 'inclusion' so much they are starting to lose their meaning."

Danhof also took issue with executives claiming that there was no correlation between their policy, which began in April, and the 18 percent drop in the company's stock since then.

"That's a whopper!" Danhof wrote on the National Center website. "For Target to deny any correlation between its announcement and its tanking stock is ignorance of the highest form. Offending millions of investors and consumers, then denying the financial implications, borders on fiduciary negligence."

Further, Breitbart reported that data tracking firm RS Metrics has been following Target since the boycott began.

"We observed a noticeable fall off in traffic at Target during the last week in April and a meaningful pickup at Walmart during that same time," Richard Chmiel, chief executive of RS Metrics, told Breitbart. "We suspect the bathroom boycott which was gaining momentum at that time contributed to the shift."

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