BERKSHIRE HATHAWAY INC

Berkshire Hathaway Inc. is one of the largest companies in the United States and employs over 396,000 people. As a major employer, Berkshire Hathaway Inc. should respect the free speech and religious freedom of its employees. Berkshire Hathaway Inc. is legally required to comply with many laws prohibiting discrimination against employees on a variety of factors, including religion and sometimes political affiliation.

Respecting diverse views also allows Berkshire Hathaway Inc. to attract the most qualified talent, promote a healthy and innovative business culture, serve its diverse customer base, and contribute to a healthy economic market and marketplace of ideas.

Despite this, the 2024 edition of the Viewpoint Diversity Score Business Index 13 found that 91% of scored companies, including Berkshire Hathaway Inc., promote divisive training concepts like critical race theory (CRT) that replace rich cultural and ideological diversity with a monolithic focus on group identity. Berkshire Hathaway Inc. has stated that it maintains a “resource library” that promotes things like “unconscious bias” and learning about “social injustice.”

While companies often push concepts like CRT under the guise of promoting “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” such efforts often have the opposite effect. Instead of creating workplaces that afford equal opportunity based on individual merit, DEI too often leads to hostility, polarization, and partiality by focusing only on differences based on skin, biological sex, or religious status.

According to the Freedom at Work survey, 60% of employees were concerned that their company would punish them for expressing their religious or political views at work, and 54% said they feared the same for sharing these views even on their private social media accounts.14

Companies are also facing increased legal and reputational a broad array of risk for DEI initiatives, workforce and compensation metrics, and programs that make distinctions based on race in light of recent Supreme Court decisions in Students for Fair Admission v. Harvard, Groff v. DeJoy, and City of St. Louis v. Muldrow. Numerous lawsuits have been filed or threatened by state attorneys general and aggrieved employees.15 Recent scholarship has cast serious doubt on the common assertion that DEI is good for business.16 The Wall Street Journal recently reported that “Diversity Goals Are Disappearing from Companies’ Annual Reports.”17 And numerous companies are voluntarily are removing DEI initiatives entirely in response to sustained customer dissatisfaction and public pressure.18 In light of these risks, the Company must take immediate steps to assess potential shortcomings and allay these concerns.

Resolved: Shareholders request the Board of Directors conduct an evaluation and issue a civil rights andnon-discrimination report within the next year, at reasonable cost and excluding proprietary and confidential information, evaluating how Berkshire Hathaway’s policies and Practices impact employees and prospective employees based on their race, color, religion (including religious views), sex, national origin, or political views and the risks those impacts present to Berkshire Hathaway’s business.

Berkshire’s Board recommends a “no” vote on this proposal. The Board believes that conducting an evaluation and issuing a civil rights andnon-discrimination report is not necessary or in the best interests of shareholders.

Berkshire is mindful of and committed to compliance with all laws and monitors changes to its legal obligations. Berkshire’s Audit Committee has the duty and responsibility to discuss guidelines and policies governing the process by which senior management of the Company assesses and manages the Company’s exposure to risk, including social risks such as diversity.

Berkshire’s approach is simple – follow the law and do the right thing. The proposal incorrectly asserts that Berkshire Hathaway Inc. has stated that it maintains a “resource library” that promotes things like “unconscious bias” and learning about “social injustice.” Berkshire does not maintain such a library.

13 https://www.viewpointdiversityscore.org/

14 https://www.viewpointdiversityscore.org/polling

15 https://www.wsj.com/us-news/law/diversity-equity-dei-companies-blum-2040b173

16 https://econjwatch.org/articles/mckinsey-s-diversity-matters-delivers-wins-results-revisited

17 https://www.wsj.com/business/diversity-goals-are-disappearing-from-companies-annual-reports-459d1ef3

18 https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13812241/american-brand-dei-rules-backlash.html

The Berkshire Code of Business Conduct and Ethics, applicable to directors, officers and employees of Berkshire and its subsidiaries, emphasizes, among other things, the commitment to ethics and compliance with government laws and regulations and provides standards for ethical and legal behavior of its employees, as well as providing a mechanism for reporting known or suspected ethical or legal violations.

Berkshire’s Board does not believe that conducting an evaluation and issuing a civil rights andnon-discrimination report is a valuable use of time or resources and recommends that our shareholders vote against this proposal.

National Center for Public Policy Research, owner of shares of Berkshire Common Stock with a value in excess of $2,000 for at least three years intends to present for action at the meeting the following proposal.

WHEREAS: The US Supreme Court ruled in SFFA v. Harvard that discriminating on the basis of race in college admissions violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.19

Attorneys General of 13 States warned Fortune 100 companies that SFFA implicates corporate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs.20

Prior legal advice regarding the legality of racially discriminatory programs has been called into question post-SFFA.21

The Supreme Court ruled in Muldrow v. City of St. Louis that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act protected against discriminatory job transfers 22 and lowered the bar for employees to successfully sue their employers for discrimination.23

Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (“Berkshire”) owns subsidiaries that may be engaging in unethical and illegal racial discrimination under the guise of DEI. For example: (1) GEICO includes on its website race-based employee resource groups;24 (2) Shaw Industries Group, Inc., also offers race-based employee groups,25 and has a supplier diversity program that tracks supplier spend on the basis of race and includes performance goals “set around increasing spend with diverse suppliers”;26 (3) Fruit of the Loom, Inc., includes increasing representation of “ethnically diverse talent” across the organization as one of its sustainability goals.27