Since the beginning of the second Trump administration, companies across industries have been capitulating to the president’s authoritarian demands. Businesses like Target and Google have walked back their DEI efforts after a flurry of executive orders targeted such initiatives. Law firms have cut deals with the president rather than challenge his policies. Even media outlets have bent to Trump.

Are we already in a constitutional crisis? Speaking at the Fast Company Innovation Festival in New York on Wednesday, Ben Wizner, director of the ACLU’s Center for Democracy, said, “We’re in a constitutional crisis if we allow it and we’re not in one if we resist it.”

Corporations can—and should—play a major role in resisting it, and preserving democracy and civil rights, multiple members of the American Civil Liberties Union’s legal team said at the event. They highlighted three things they’d like to see corporations do in this moment.

Lobby against discriminatory bills

“As someone who works in state legislatures and lobbies against anti-LGBTQ bills across the country, the reality is that the single most powerful way to stop discriminatory legislation across the country is to have corporations lobby against those bills,” said Chase Strangio, codirector of the ACLU’s LGBT & HIV Project.

Take HB2, also called the Bathroom Bill, a 2016 North Carolina law that required people to use the bathroom that matched the sex on their birth certificate—a way to restrict and harm transgender people. Companies including Nike, Apple, and American Airlines joined the fight against it, and ultimately that bill was repealed.

Fast-forward to 2025 and multiple states are pushing bills that target healthcare for trans youth—and many companies are silent.

However, sanding up against such attacks actually benefits companies, according to Strangio.

“It is good for business to attract employees into states because those laws will protect their families, and will protect their children,” he says. “People should push their companies to continue those efforts.”

He added, “I think there’s very good reason to believe that individuals are not going to come and you’re not going to retain talent if you are not pushing back against that type of legislation at every level.”

Question the Trump administration’s claims

Corporations should also openly question factually inaccurate claims from the Trump administration, relying on their own data to back up their stance.

For instance, Trump has attacked diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, but 83% of C-Suite leaders say DEI is key to retention. They also have evidence that such policies spur innovation, sharper decision making, productivity, and so on, said Yasmin Cader, deputy legal director at the ACLU and the director of the Trone Center for Justice and Equality.

“Corporate America has such a unique platform and opportunity to not have to punch back in a counterattack, but just say, ‘What are you talking about? This works. We’ve seen it work,’” she said.

Don’t give Trump power he doesn’t actually have

And ultimately, companies shouldn’t give Trump power that he doesn’t actually have, Wizner said. “Trump is acting like he’s in a system that gives him unlimited power,” he said. “That’s not actually true.”

To use the pressure on law firms as an example, Trump “doesn’t actually have the power to say that this law firm can’t enter federal buildings, or can’t get contracts because [he] disagrees with some of the positions that they took.”

Courts back that up, too. But law firms are preemptively signing agreements with Trump to say they won’t do those things. “You’ve just handed him the power to do that,” Wizner said.

Wizner urged corporations to think about how their actions now—what they did and also did not do—will look in five, 10, or 15 years. He also emphasized the power of solidarity. More than 100 nonprofits, for example, have banded together to push back against an anticipated crackdown on their sector from the Trump administration, essentially saying that an attack on any one of them is an attack on all. That’s a lesson for other industries.

“If you allow them to pick organizations or issues off one by one,” Wizner said, “it’s almost impossible to resist.”