ErrorBnb
Airbnb conveniently loses paperwork for conservative proposals but offers red carpet treatment for liberal ones.
As many of you know, we recently submitted a shareholder proposal to Airbnb on behalf of The Heritage Foundation. The proposal asked the company to report on the legal and reputational risks associated with politicized divestments—particularly in light of Airbnb’s past decision to delist properties in Israeli settlements.
Airbnb’s decision to delist properties in Israeli settlements in the West Bank was announced in 2018 and sparked significant controversy. The company stated that the move was part of a broader policy to evaluate listings in disputed territories around the world. Specifically, Airbnb said it would remove listings in Israeli settlements in the West Bank because it believed that allowing them “contributed to the existing human suffering” and that the listings were “at the core of the dispute between Israelis and Palestinians.” The company framed the decision as a human rights and ethical issue, not a political one.
However, critics—including U.S. lawmakers and Jewish organizations—argued that the policy was discriminatory, especially since Airbnb continued to list properties in other disputed or occupied territories globally. The backlash led Airbnb to reverse the decision in 2019, opting instead to donate profits from those listings to humanitarian organizations.
If they reversed this decision, why pursue it now? Because companies need to show shareholders not only that they reversed bad calls, but that they learned their lessons and put in place reforms that will help prevent such bad calls in the future.
The proposal was submitted in hard copy, as required by Airbnb’s own proxy statement. We have FedEx documentation showing it was delivered and signed for by an employee Airbnb confirmed works in their mailroom. The name on the receipt matches the head of their mailroom. And yet, when the company released its annual proxy statement the proposal was nowhere to be found. Even more troubling was their silence when repeated emails to investor relations went unanswered. Numerous phone calls were ignored. Only after I escalated things by privately messaging Airbnb executives on LinkedIn did we receive any acknowledgment at all
Airbnb claims the proposal was never received.
When pressed, the company suggested—without evidence—that FedEx may have forged the signature. That’s not a typo. They implied that a global logistics company fabricated a delivery confirmation to a Fortune 500 company’s headquarters. If that’s true, perhaps they should be suing FedEx. This leaves some glaring questions in place: if the mail room was open that day, why would FedEx forge the signature, and if the mailroom was not open on the day that Airbnb had itself set as the deadline for proposals, is this an intentional tactic to block unwelcome proposals?
When we pointed out their legal obligations, they told us, “Take it to the SEC. God bless.”
Well, we did report it to the SEC and Heritage has taken this to the Federal District Court of Delaware thanks to Boyden Gray and Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF). Whether God will bless it remains to be seen.
This isn’t an isolated incident. Another conservative group, ACVF (the co-Plaintiff in this case) experienced the same vanishing act with a delivery receipt bearing the name of the same head of the mailroom, but on a different day. Meanwhile, a liberal state pension plan’s proposal was included without issue. Similarly, in the past the company welcomed without opposition (which is quite unusual) a proposal from a NYC pension fund.
The pattern is hard to ignore.
We’ve asked Airbnb whether this matter was discussed at the board level. They said no. When we asked about committee-level discussions or post-filing deliberations, they dodged.
We’re not asking for special treatment. We’re asking for equal treatment. And we’re asking for the law to be followed.
We had even suggested a simple solution: allow shareholders to vote on the proposal through a supplemental proxy or alternative mechanism, a common procedure which would not have inconvenienced the company at all. Airbnb refused. When asked why, their legal team responded, “It wasn’t something we were interested in pursuing.”
Airbnb might be taking a lax attitude towards all this, but Bloomberg law is not (Jilted Conservatives Whose Mail Vanished Sue Airbnb Over Proxies) and neither are ACVF and The Heritage Foundation, who have responded with clarity and resolve. A lawsuit has been filed by conservative powerhouse law firms Boyden Gray and ADF in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware to hold Airbnb accountable for its failure to follow SEC rules and its own stated policies.
These companies need to wake up to the new reality. We are not going to continue to look the other way as they pursue personal ideology with shareholder resources and we are not going to just slouch away when our rights are being violated.
Jerry Bowyer is President of Bowyer Research.