While a number of major businesses have asked North Carolina’s governor to repeal a recently enacted law that restricts cities’ ability to offer protections based on sexual preference or gender identification, most have yet to cease or limit their operations in the state. But today, PayPal said it is scrubbing its recently announced plans to open new offices and hire 400 people in Charlotte.
In a blog post, PayPal CEO Dan Schulman explicitly cites HB2 — the piece of legislation that overrides and prevents local governments from establishing anti-discrimination rules against gay and transgender people — as the reason that his company is nixing the North Carolina plans.
“The new law perpetuates discrimination and it violates the values and principles that are at the core of PayPal’s mission and culture,” writes Schulman, who explains that the company believes that “every person has the right to be treated equally, and with dignity and respect. These principles of fairness, inclusion and equality are at the heart of everything we seek to achieve and stand for as a company. And they compel us to take action to oppose discrimination.”
The CEO says he regrets that PayPal won’t be opening the new office in Charlotte, where HB2 strikes down a recently passed ordinance allowing transgender people to use the public restroom of whichever gender they identify with, but contends that “becoming an employer in North Carolina, where members of our teams will not have equal rights under the law, is simply untenable.”
Schulman says PayPal will continue to support the movement to overturn HB2.
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