The backlash against a North Carolina law that bars local governments from extending civil rights protections to gay and transgender people continued Tuesday, with PayPal saying it is abandoning plans to expand into Charlotte in response to the legislation.
This decision came just weeks after PayPal, the California-based online payments firm spun off from eBay, said it would open a global operations center in Charlotte, a move that state officials said would bring millions to the local economy and employ 400 people.
“The new law perpetuates discrimination and it violates the values and principles that are at the core of PayPal’s mission and culture,” Dan Schulman, PayPayl’s president and chief executive, wrote in a statement Tuesday. “As a result, PayPal will not move forward with our planned expansion into Charlotte.”
North Carolina’s law was introduced to override a civil rights ordinance passed in Charlotte earlier this year that said transgender people in the state’s largest city could use bathrooms corresponding with their gender identity.
State lawmakers hastily introduced and passed a bill that overrode Charlotte’s measure law last month and said that transgender people were prohibited from using bathrooms that are not the same as the gender listed at their birth.
Gov. Pat McCrory, R, signed the state measure, praising it as needed “to stop this breach of basic privacy and etiquette” in Charlotte.
The state law was quickly pilloried by LGBT rights groups and a host of companies, including Apple, Google, American Airlines and Lowe’s. The NBA, which has a franchise in Charlotte, suggested it was considering moving next season’s All-Star game out of that city due to the law. A lawsuit filed against the legislation last week called it tantamount to legalized discrimination.
This law could also cost the state federal funding. At least five federal agencies are debating whether to withhold money due to the law.
McCrory has defended the state law as a needed protection for people using a public restroom or locker room. In a video message posted last week, he said the state “has been the target of a vicious, nationwide smear campaign.”
On Tuesday, Schulman said PayPal regretted its decision to abandon the Charlotte facility, but called the choice “clear and ambiguous.”
“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,” Schulman said.
PayPal’s decision appears to be the biggest response yet from a major company to the law. Last month, McCrory praised the news that PayPal would open the Charlotte facility, calling North Carolina “the ideal destination” for such a company.
The announcement that PayPal would expand to Charlotte “means that we can add another prominent name to the state’s growing list of technology businesses with major operations here,” McCrory said in a statement.
McCrory’s office had said that PayPal would invest more than $3.6 million in Mecklenburg County by the end of next year. His office also said that a state grant, approved in March, made PayPal eligible to get up to $2.7 million in reimbursements over the next 12 years.
