Rubio calls his proposal “a private-sector solution to the problem of woke corporations.” But what it really is is an unserious proposal with lots of potential unintended consequences. Even though its ends are professedly anti-woke, its means sound like the sort of half-brained, anti-free-market idea that would come out of the OWS Ideas tent in Zuccotti Park a decade ago.

There are already ways to deal with corporate boards that act improperly: shareholder elections and taking your money elsewhere. What Rubio proposes is giving a minority shareholder a political fast-track superpower, and he laughably calls it a private-sector solution…

Rubio also is using the Securities Exchange Act as a cudgel. His bill stipulates that compliance with his proposal would be a “condition of listing on a national securities exchange.” While most major corporations are incorporated in a concentration of East Coast states that are business friendly, but also not run by culture-warrior Republicans, and so those states’ laws would usually govern corporate behavior. But Rubio is attempting to use the SEC as a workaround vehicle to their various state laws regarding corporations and fiduciary duty.

Very free-market and small-government and not at all a boon to trial lawyers. Sheesh.