Five days after North Carolina’s governor announced that online-payment company PayPal would be building a new global operations center in Charlotte, the state passed a “religious freedom” bill that prevents its cities and counties from passing their own anti-discrimination rules, dealing a blow to the LGBT movement.
Supporters say it’s common-sense legislation, and focused on language in Charlotte’s recently passed anti-discrimination law that, among other things, allowed transgender people to use the bathroom aligned with their identity.
PayPal, however, sided with critics who say the North Carolina law perpetuates discrimination. It canceled plans for the new $3.6 million operations center, which would have employed 400 people. The company’s CEO and President Dan Schulman told USA Today that locating in the state “where members of our teams will not have equal rights under the law, is simply untenable.”
Lionsgate, a California-based entertainment company that had planned to shoot a pilot for a comedy series in North Carolina, changed locations due to the law. New Jersey-based Braeburn Pharmaceuticals is now reconsidering building a facility there. A handful of states, including Washington, have banned official travel to The Tar Heel State.
Montana Gov. Steve Bullock and U.S. Sen. Jon Tester sent a letter to Schulman, commending his decision and encouraging him to “choose Montana for this and any other future expansions of PayPal’s operations.” While that is unlikely, the Democrats pitched a “rich quality of life (that) matches our business climate.”
For his part, North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory said through a spokesperson that the backlash is a “well-coordinated, national campaign to smear our state’s reputation after we passed a common-sense law.”
Since the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision legalizing same-sex marriage last year, conservative lawmakers in several states across the country have pushed back with laws similar to North Carolina’s. Big businesses, especially tech companies that often rely on a young and diverse workforce and are headquartered in liberal cities, have increasingly exercised their newfound clout.
Along with PayPal, Apple and Facebook objected to the North Carolina law. And, according to the New York Times, Google Venture’s chief executive Bill Maris “pledged not to make any new investments in the state until the law is overturned.”
During Montana’s last legislative session, a religious freedom law was narrowly defeated in the House when lawmakers deadlocked 50-50. Similar legislation will almost certainly surface next session and, more imminently, the issue is being debated in the governor’s race.
Montana Republican gubernatorial candidate Greg Gianforte, the founder of software company RightNow Technologies, opposed a nondiscrimination ordinance Bozeman passed in 2014. In an email to Bozeman city commissioners, he wrote, “Homosexual advocates try to argue that businesses are leery of locating in towns that aren’t friendly to homosexuals. I believe the opposite is true.”
But in an interview with the Bozeman Daily Chronicle last week, Gianforte said through a spokesperson he wouldn’t pursue religious liberty legislation.
What’s changed?
For one, along with tax and regulation policy, corporations are lobbying states over social issues they believe are unfriendly to their workforce and, subsequently, unfriendly to their respective bottom lines.