Abstract
It is the best of times for advocates of religious liberty and the worst of times for Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) investors. Over the past few decades, the Supreme Court has expanded protections for religious individuals, organizations, and corporations by interpreting the First Amendment’s Religion Clauses evermore expansively. Meanwhile, for ESG investors, times are grim. Conservative lawmakers have vowed to “eradicate this evil pollutant from our markets” and are making good on their promise with a wave of legislation, investigations, and congressional hearings—aimed at preventing investors from incorporating environmental and social issues into investment decisions. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is on board too, construing SEC Rule 14a-8 to kneecap investors’ ability to submit any “non-binding” shareholder proposal, which includes proposals on environmental and social issues.
Expanding religious liberty while constraining ESG investing may appear to be a consistent policy agenda. It is based on the familiar but flawed assumption that religious businesses and investors are aligned with conservative values—and not with a “woke” agenda. So, when Congressman Jim Jordan sent a wave of letters to scrutinize investors who joined Climate Action 100+, an investor initiative to address climate change, he ended up, perhaps unintentionally, targeting dozens of churches and Christian organizations. He even raised the ire of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which expressed its concern that the Chairman appeared to disregard “the freedom of religious groups to make investment decisions.”
This Article intervenes at this critical juncture to tell the story of Christian faith investors in the United States. It shows that Christian faith investors have been integrating environmental and social issues into their investment decisions since at least the eighteenth century. They were also in the vanguard of shareholder advocacy in the early 1970s on issues including apartheid, gun violence, pollution, and gender equity. Today, they remain active shareholders, are remarkably diverse, and span ideological divides. This rich descriptive account, the first in the literature, highlights new questions at the intersection of religious liberty doctrine and corporate and securities law. By applying religious liberty jurisprudence, including the First Amendment’s Religion Clauses and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, to faith investing practices, this Article reveals a growing tension between religiously motivated investment decisions and anti-ESG laws and regulations that constrain values-based investing.
Volume
110
Issue
5
Page
2247
Year
2026
Recommended Citation
Amelia Miazad,
Faith Investors,
110
Minn. L. Rev.
2247
(2026).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.umn.edu/minnlrev/vol110/iss5/4
Rights
http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-EDU/1.0/
Publication Abbreviation
Minn. L. Rev.
