Dive Brief:
- States that are passing so-called religious-freedom driven "Bathroom bills" are getting serious pushback from major employers invested in those states, according to the AP.
- The article points out that those large companies within Southern states in particular (North Carolina, Mississippi and others) have become some of the most vocal opponents of bills they see as discriminatory.
- The article cites the NFL, Apple and other big brands as forcing Republican lawmakers in those states into "rejecting or softening" such bills, which proponents say protect people who oppose same-sex marriage on religious grounds. The volume went up a notch when the U.S. Supreme Court effectively legalized gay marriage, as several states decided to take action against that ruling through their own laws.
Dive Insight:
Even with the latest flurry of opposition, the AP article notes that companies have been supportive for the past several years on winning the hearts and minds of LGBT employees and customers.
For example, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz in 2013 told a shareholder who said the company’s support for gay marriage negatively affected profits that not all decisions are driven purely by economics.
California-based PayPal CEO Dan Schulman said in a statement last week the company was ending plans to hire 400 people for a new operations center in Charlotte, N.C.
“As a company that is committed to the principle that everyone deserves to live without fear of discrimination simply for being who they are, becoming an employer in North Carolina, where members of our teams will not have equal rights under the law, is simply untenable,” he said. So far, that decision is one of the most impactful outcomes of the North Carolina's law overruling LGBT anti-discrimination measure, the AP reports.
In addition, about 400 companies in March 2015 signed a court document filed with the U.S. Supreme Court as it reviewed several states’ gay marriage bans (the court effectively legalized the gay marriage i June 2015). Attorneys representing those companies wrote the “fractured legal landscape” of differing state policies on marriage harmed the companies’ ability to operate across state lines, according to the AP.