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These 70 Corporations Want to Block North Carolina's Transgender Bathroom Law

CBN

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Large corporations are throwing their weight against North Carolina by supporting the Department of Justice in its lawsuit to block the state's bathroom law, or H.B. 2 mandate.  

The mandate requires transgender individuals to use bathrooms, locker rooms and other facilities that correspond to their gender at birth. 

Nearly 70 companies have filed a friend-of-the Court brief in support of the Department of Justice lawsuit to overturn the law. Some of those corporations include American Airlines, United Airlines, Apple, Cisco, eBay, General Electric, IBM, Intel, LinkedIn, Microsoft, NIKE, Salesforce, PayPal, Ikea and the Hilton and Marriott hotel chains.

"By compelling transgender persons in North Carolina to deny their gender identity when using public facilities, H.B. 2 stigmatizes them and conveys a clear message — with the full force of State law — that they are second-class citizens whose gender identity is under-serving of solicitude or respect," the brief says. "This inescapably tends to legitimize discrimination against transgender persons generally."

PayPal was one of the first corporations to criticize the measure, which was introduced to override a civil rights ordinance passed in Charlotte. 

The corporation cancelled plans to bring more than 400 jobs and a $3.6 million investment into Charlotte with its new operation center

"The legislation invalidates protections of the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender citizens and denies these members of our community equal rights under the law," said PayPal President and CEO Dan Schulman back in April. 

North Carolina's top leaders fired back at the corporation calling their decision hypocritical.

"PayPal does business in 25 countries where homosexual behavior is illegal, including three countries where the penalty is death," U.S. Rep. Robert Pittenger, R-NC, said. "Yet, they object to the North Carolina legislature overturning a misguided ordinance about letting men into the women's bathroom?"

North Carolina Lt. Governor Dan Forest announced to other corporations, in April, that North Carolina was not backing down.

"If a corporation wanting to do business in North Carolina does not see the worth of our children in the same light then I wish them well as they do business somewhere else," he said.
 

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