CHARLOTTE, July 11, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – A well-heeled coalition of 68 corporations has signed a document asking a federal court to overturn North Carolina's restroom privacy protection law, H.B. 2.
The corporate partners include some of the most elite business and financial concerns in the United States, including Apple, Microsoft, Bloomberg, Ikea, Morgan Stanley, PayPal, General Electric, and Dow Chemical. Critics have observed that many of these companies willingly do business with nations with poor LGBT human rights records.
The coalition joined in concert to sign an amicus curiae, or “friend of the court,” brief against H.B. 2 filed by the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's best-funded LGBT political lobbying organization.
On Friday, the corporate coalition made its legal opposition to H.B. 2 official.
“It’s disappointing that some companies are joining the Obama administration’s position which jeopardizes those long-held expectations of privacy,” said Governor Pat McCrory, a moderate Republican, in a statement.
Gov. McCrory has faced massive backlash since signing the bill, a move he notes was taken in reaction to the city of Charlotte – where he served multiple terms as mayor – passing a city ordinance requiring schools and private businesses to allow members of one biological sex to use the restrooms, showers, and private facilities of the opposite sex. Believing that raised safety, as well as privacy, concerns, he called the state legislature back into session to pass H.B. 2.
The law requires all people to use the intimate facilities of the sex listed on their birth certificate when visiting public accommodations.
The state allows transgender people to change their birth certificates if they have had gender reassignment surgery, something the Obama administration says is “itself discriminatory” against “women” who have male genitalia.
The brief, written by former George W. Bush Solicitor General Ted Olson, states that H.B. 2 condones “naked, invidious discrimination.”
The 68 corporate signers are:
Accenture
Affirm, Inc.
Airbnb, Inc.
American Airlines
Apple
Biogen
Bloomberg LP
Boehinger Ingleheim USA
Box
Brocade Communications System, Inc.
Capital One Financial Corporation
Cisco Systems, Inc.
Consumer Technology Association
Corning Incorporated, Cummins Inc.
Dropbox, Inc.
Dupont
eBay, Inc.
Etsy
Everlaw
Expedia
FiftyThree
Galxyz
Gap Inc
General Electric Company
Glassdoor, Inc.
Grokker
Hilton Worldwide
Honor
IBM Corporation
IKEA North American Services, LLC
Instacart
Intel Corporation
John Hancock
Levi Strauss & Co.
LinkedIn Corporation
Logitech
Marriott International
Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company
Microsoft Corporation
Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams
Morgan Stanley
Nextdoor
NIKE
OppenheimerFunds
Orbitz Worldwide
PayPal
Pepo
Quotient
RBC Capital Markets, LLC
Red Hat
Replacements, Ltd.
Salesforce
Slack
SV Angel LLC
Symantec Corporation
TD Bank, NA
Teespring
The Dow Chemical Company
Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc.
ThirdLove
Tumblr
UnifyID
United Airlines, Inc.
Williams-Sonoma, Inc.
Yelp
ZestFinance
Zynga.
