NC hammered with backlash over anti-gay law
March 26, 201607:12PayPal, an online money transfer service, has canceled its plans to open an operations center in Charlotte, citing North Carolina's new anti-discrimination law. The company announced plans on March 18 to open its new global operations center that would have employed 400 people. Five days later, Gov. Pat McCrory signed into law House Bill 2, which barred transgender people from using the public bathroom of the gender with which they identify.
NC Values Coalition, which urged passage of the law, claimed in a Tuesday news release that it had a list of more than 300 North Carolina businesses which had pledged support for HB 2. Claiming that most businesses feared retaliation if their support was made public, the group released a list of 17 companies it said had agreed to openly support the law. But the largest and most influential of the companies on that list -- HanesBrands of Winston-Salem -- said it doesn't support the law and asked to be removed. [...] When asked about the veracity of the rest of the list, [NC Values Coalition spokeswoman Kami Mueller] clarified that it actually represents more than 300 individuals, not businesses.... When asked if there was a chance that other people on the list might not be authorized to represent their companies, Mueller said: "There's a chance of everything. There's a chance I could get hit by a bus."