Target Shareholders Sue Over Losses From 'Tuck' Bathing Suits And 'Super Queer' Shirts During Pride Month

Target continues to face fallout from its uber-woke line of Pride Month merchandise.

Now that the company has lost billions of dollars due in part to boycotts, some shareholders have filed a lawsuit against the company.

If you've managed to block it out of your brain (consider yourself lucky, and I apologize for bringing it up), Target sold women's swimsuits that were "tuck-friendly," and items with slogans like "Gender Fluid" and "Super Queer."

It went over like a lead balloon. Actually, a lead balloon may have gone over better.

The company was hit with a consumer boycott and some stores relocated the display to less trafficked parts of the store.

Still, the gaffe contributed to Target's market value hitting the skids and dropping from $74 billion before the displays hit stores to $60.3 billion this week.

That's not a way to make your shareholders happy, and as you might expect, some are not.

Earlier this week, America First Legal (AFL) filed a lawsuit against the company over the Pride merch that resulted in the boycott and plummeting stock price.

The suit — filed on behalf of shareholder Brian Craig — accuses the company of "betraying Target’s customers and shareholders with misleading representations about its Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) mandates, and for causing Target shareholders to lose billions of dollars."

Pride displays like this one resulted in more headaches and lost profits than other woke street cred Target was hoping for. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Lawsuit Accuses Target Of Only Caring About 'Leftist Stakeholders'

The AFL announced the suit with a doozy of a statement that took Target to task for prioritizing progressive ideology above its shareholders.

"However, management only cared whether its leftist ‘stakeholders’ were satisfied, disregarding the possibility that its customers and shareholders might feel differently. Thus, in May 2023, Target embraced the radical transgender agenda with its children-and-family-themed ‘Pride’ marketing and sales campaign — the corporation’s infamous ‘Pride’ collection included clothing for young children… this predictably caused more than a $12 billion collapse in share value, the largest stock price decline in over 20 years," the AFL wrote.

Furthermore, they accused the company of misleading shareholders by assuring them that the corporation oversees social and political issues and risks to protect shareholders." Instead, the AFL says the company instead opted to embrace far-left ideologies at the shareholders; expense.

Believe it or not, I'm not a legal scholar (shocking, I know) so I don't have an inkling of how this lawsuit will shake out. However, I do think it's hard to argue that any company that embraces woke ideology — considering how many case studies there are at this point — is doing their shareholders a disservice.

We've seen it from Target, we've seen it from Bud Light, and we've seen it from Disney. All of them are companies that at some point leaned into progressive politics with disastrous results.

The saying "Go woke, Go broke" doesn't exist simply because it rhymes. It's because wokeness inherently requires forgoing common business practices.

Y'know, the traditional kind of business practices designed to make money? Yeah, those.

So, whether anything comes of this lawsuit from the AFL or not, Target shareholders have every reason to be hot under the collar.

Follow on Twitter: @Matt_Reigle