Just two weeks after announcing their plans to “open a new global operations center” in Charlotte, NC that would “employ over 400 people in skilled jobs,” PayPal has abandoned the project due to the state’s recently passed legislation that overturned every single anti-LGBT-discrimination measure in the state.
In a statement released Tuesday, PayPal President and CEO Dan Schulman called their decision a “clear and unambiguous one,” explaining that “the new law...violates the values and principles that are at the core of PayPal’s mission and culture.”
He continued:
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.
But PayPal isn’t the only company to announce plans to avoid doing business in the state. Since last week, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has banned “all nonessential government travel to North Carolina,” and several studios—including Lionsgate, 21st Century Fox, and A&E—have either announced plans to “reevaluate” future North Carolina-based productions or pulled out of the state entirely.
In a letter signed by the CEOs of “more than 80 major corporations—including Google, Apple, You Tube, Yahoo and Microsoft,” North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory was “strongly” urged to “to repeal this law in the upcoming legislative session.”
A similarly discriminatory bill was vetoed by Georgia Governor Nathan Deal last week.
Image via AP.
DISCUSSION
A rare showing of what “corporate responsibility” really means. Good on PayPal.