Ben & Jerry’s is suing its London-based parent company, Unilever, saying it silenced the brand’s attempts to express support for Palestinian refugees. The ice cream brand tried to publicly speak out on four separate occasions “in support of peace and human rights. Unilever has silenced each of these efforts,” the lawsuit said.
In a statement to Reuters, Unilever said, “Our heart goes out to all victims of the tragic events in the Middle East. We reject the claims made by B&J’s social mission board, and we will defend our case very strongly.”
This isn’t the first time Ben & Jerry’s has clashed with Unilever over its political activism, which has been core to the brand’s DNA since its founding in 1978. Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield founded the international ice cream company in Burlington, Vermont, with a mission to “advance human rights and dignity.” From the jump, they committed to using locally sourced, hormone-free milk to produce the ice cream, and opened their first shop in a renovated gas station. The brand has grown to nearly 600 locations worldwide.
Ben & Jerry’s has been a longstanding supporter of progressive social causes, and has garnered attention for being outspoken about social and economic injustices affecting systematically marginalized communities. The brand’s website says “We love making ice cream—but using our business to make the world a better place gives our work its meaning.”
Back in 2011, QSR reported on the brand’s support for Occupy Wall Street protests against corporate greed and the influence of money in politics. The company’s leaders, which included former CEO Jostein Solheim and chairman Jeff Furman, called for an end to corporate personhood. Specifically, the company supported the repeal of a decision from the Supreme Court in its 2010 Citizens United case that allowed companies to financially back political campaigns. In the decision, the Court ruled that the government cannot censor political broadcasts in elections that are funded by corporations. This paved the way for super PACs or “dark money” groups that spend billions of dollars to influence politicians and consequently impact U.S. elections. “We must get money out of politics,” Furman said. “We choose democracy.”
Ben & Jerry’s went public in 1984, but reverted back to a private company when Unilever—one of the world’s largest consumer goods companies with over 400 brands and a net worth of over $140 billion—acquired the business in 2000. Co-founder Greenfield was reportedly unhappy about the takeover from the global giant. However, the deal was Ben & Jerry’s would be run autonomously by an independent board of directors, allowing it to continue supporting social issues.
Digging into the Details
In the recent lawsuit, the ice cream brand claimed Unilever overstepped and breached the terms of a 2022 settlement, which required the parent company to “respect and acknowledge the Ben & Jerry’s Independent Board’s primary responsibility over Ben & Jerry’s social mission and essential brand integrity” and “work in good faith with the Independent Board to ensure that both are protected and furthered.”
In July 2020, the brand’s Independent Board unanimously passed a resolution directing company management to create a plan to end all distribution of Ben & Jerry’s products in “Israeli-only settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory” in West Bank because it was inconsistent with its values. The company announced the decision publicly a year later, and Unilever issued a concurrent press release declaring that it had “always recognised the right of the brand and its Independent Board to take decisions about its social missions.”
However, in June 2022, Unilever announced it had sold Ben & Jerry’s intellectual property in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory to its Israeli licensee, which would market Ben & Jerry’s products with Hebrew and Arabic labels and allow sales in the settlements to continue. The Independent Board claimed it was not informed or consulted about the sale, and responded by filing a lawsuit within a matter of days, arguing that Unilever’s actions breached the terms of the previous merger agreement, and undermined their responsibility to protect Ben & Jerry’s values and mission. Ben & Jerry’s request to block the sale was rejected by a federal judge.
In the new lawsuit, Ben & Jerry’s said that just months after the settlement agreement was reached in December 2022, “Unilever had already begun its efforts to undermine it. Specifically, during the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza, which has claimed the lives of over 18,000 innocent Palestinian children, Ben & Jerry’s has on four occasions attempted to publicly speak out in support of peace and human rights. Despite its contractual commitment to ‘respect and acknowledge’ the Independent Board’s primary responsibility over Ben & Jerry’s Social Mission and Essential Brand Integrity, Unilever has silenced each of these efforts.”
Here are the posts listed in the lawsuit:
December 2023: Call for Peace and Ceasefire
Ben & Jerry’s claims it told Unilever in December 2023 that the company planned on publicly calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. “Ben & Jerry’s calls for peace and a permanent and immediate ceasefire,” the statement read.
In response, Ben & Jerry’s said Unilever threatened to dismantle the Independent Board and sue the board members individually if they issued the above statement. “These threats were coupled with personal calls from Peter ter Kulve and Jeff Eglash (Unilever’s President of Ice Cream and Global Head of Litigation), who attempted to intimidate Ben & Jerry’s personnel with professional reprisals if the company issued the ceasefire statement,” according to the lawsuit.
May 2024: Safe Passage for Palestinian Refugees
In May, Ben & Jerry’s social activism managers in Europe tried to release the following statement in support of the safe passage of Palestinians fleeing Gaza:
“People fleeing war need routes to safety, but right now there are no safe ways for Palestinians affected by war to seek sanctuary in the UK. So just like the UK did for Ukrainians, we ask that the Government urgently create a Visa Scheme allowing Palestinians to reunite SAFELY with their loved ones in the UK.”
The lawsuit claims that Unilever blocked the social activism managers from publishing the statement, without the Independent Board’s knowledge or consent. Ben & Jerry’s also detailed its long history of supporting safe passage for refugees from multiple countries, including Rwanda, Afghanistan, and Ukraine, among others.
June 2024: Supporting Campus Protests
As students at college campuses across the country were protesting civilian deaths and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, Ben & Jerry’s management and Independent Board agreed on issuing a public statement supporting the protesters’ First Amendment rights. (The exact text of the statement was not included in the lawsuit.) When Ben & Jerry’s informed Unilever that they would be publishing the statement supporting the protesters’ rights in June, Jeffery Eglash, Unilever global head of litigation, barred its release, according to the lawsuit.
September 2024: Blocking Arms Sales to Israel
In September, Ben & Jerry’s sought to endorse Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ resolution calling for legislation blocking $20 billion in arms sales to Israel. “Sending more weapons to Netanyahu’s extremist government is immoral & illegal: U.S. weapons are responsible for far too many civilian casualties in Gaza. We must end our complicity in this atrocity,” said Sanders in a social media post on September 25.
Ben & Jerry’s statement said: “We Support the Sanders Resolution. As the one-year anniversary of October 7th approaches, with tens of thousands of innocent Palestinian civilians killed and dozens of Israeli hostages still held, we believe in providing critical humanitarian aid, not in sending more weapons. We urge you to join us in calling on the Senate to pass the Sanders Resolution and halt an additional $20 billion in military aid to Israel.”
The following day, Ben & Jerry’s was informed that Peter ter Kulve, Unilever president of ice cream, had “unilaterally vetoed the statement in what amounted to Unilever’s fourth act of censoring Ben & Jerry’s social mission in less than a six-month span,” according to the lawsuit.
Blocking Donations to Humanitarian Organizations
Ben & Jerry’s also alleged that Unilever did not fulfill a key condition of their 2022 settlement agreement, which required the parent company to provide $5 million for the Independent Board, in collaboration with Unilever, to distribute to human rights and humanitarian organizations of their choosing.
Unilever blocked Ben & Jerry’s from donating to Jewish Voice for Peace, saying “the group was too critical of the Israeli government,” the lawsuit said, and also blocked the brand’s donation to the San Francisco Bay-area Chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Ben & Jerry’s said Unilever’s objections were “riddled with inconsistencies” and “boiled down to the same issue: The organizations were advocating for human rights, named Palestinian human rights … Unilever’s pretext for blocking the donations was that it allegedly seeks to remain ‘neutral’ on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.”
“Unilever has repeatedly failed to recognize and respect the Independent Board’s primary responsibility over Ben & Jerry’s Social Mission and Brand Integrity, including threatening Ben & Jerry’s personnel should the company speak regarding issues which Unilever prefers to censor,” the ice cream maker said in the lawsuit. “The Independent Board initiates this litigation to protect Ben & Jerry’s three-part mission from Unilever’s unilateral erosion and to safeguard the company from Unilever’s repeated overreaches.”
While some companies may strive to stay neutral and inoffensive to all, Ben & Jerry’s is comfortable leaning into issues, even if it does alienate some consumers. On the flip side, those brand values resonate with other consumers, who are deeply loyal as a result, QSR wrote in a 2019 article. Ben & Jerry’s was one of the first major companies to support marriage equality in 2009, and in 2015, it joined other businesses (including the candy company Mars) in appealing for a tax on carbon emissions at the U.N. Climate Change Conference.
Ben & Jerry’s filed the lawsuit on November 14 in the Southern District of New York.
In March, Unilever announced that it was cutting 7,500 jobs and spinning off its ice cream business to reduce costs and boost profits.
