TOM OLOHAN: The Human Rights Campaign’s Rating System Is A ‘Total Scam’

MRC Free Speech America made a disturbing find on the website of a radical anti-free speech group.

MRC researchers found that some of the worst censors are highly decorated by the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), a group that pushes censorship and LGBTQ values on corporations. The HRC has awarded perfect ESG-like scores to many of the biggest technology companies and financial institutions, including Google, Apple, LinkedIn and its parent company Microsoft, Amazon, PayPal and Etsy. Elon Musk’s X, however, received a drastically lower score in 2025.

The HRC went after Musk in October 2022 for proposed pro-free speech changes when he purchased Twitter. The pressure group also criticized the decreased content moderation on X in February 2023 and later condemned X for allowing PragerU to post its documentary “Detrans: The Dangers of Gender-Affirming Care” as sponsored content. HRC’s Corporate Equality Index — which is akin to an ESG scoring program — awarded X zero points for 2025 and applied a negative 25-point “responsible citizenship” penalty.

Former Trump administration acting Director of National Intelligence Rick Grenell condemned efforts by the HRC to push censorship and the Corporate Equality Index ratings. “The whole system that HRC has is pay to play. You have to pay in order to get a rating,” Grenell said, before calling the HRC approach a “total scam.”

Grenell added that, “Most people have rejected HRC from the moment that their top executive outed them for being racist and actually sued them for their racism.” Grenell also noted that he had personally repeatedly called for the IRS to revoke the HRC’s tax-exempt status for their partisan behavior. Grenell further added that “They’re supposedly a gay organization, but they’re literally apoplectic about gay conservatives.”

While many of the companies with perfect scores are also platinum, gold, silver or bronze corporate partners of the HRC, the HRC officially rates companies according to how closely they abide by the HRC’s preferred practices for hiring, training, vendor selection, charitable giving, health care, etc. Companies can earn up to 100 points if the “responsible citizenship” penalty is not applied.

If the HRC has not penalized the rest of Big Tech for a lack of “responsible citizenship,” is the HRC satisfied with their content moderation policies? MRC Free Speech America asked Big Tech companies and banks that have perfect scores and have past censorship cases in our exclusive database CensorTrack where they stand on censorship. Alphabet, Apple, Etsy, PayPal, IBM, eBay, and Wells Fargo did not respond to a request for comment. LinkedIn and Amazon did not provide a comment on the record.

However, Bank of America provided a statement to MRC when asked whether it would debank accounts that the HRC objects to. Bank of America stated, “We are required to follow extensive government regulations that sometimes result in requirements to exit relationships. We never close accounts for political reasons and don’t have a political litmus test. Advocacy groups play no role in account closing decisions.”

In addition to the Big Tech companies and financial institutions listed above, Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta also received a perfect score. However, Zuckerberg released a video promising to ease up on content moderation and “get rid of fact-checkers” on Jan. 7, the exact same day that the HRC published the 2025 Corporate Equality Index. The HRC responded with a Jan. 15 statement heavily criticizing the changes, further demonstrating their opposition to free speech on the internet.

Tom Olohan is an MRC Free Speech America Staff Writer.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.