Apple’s considering opening up a campus in North Carolina despite the anti-LGBTQ laws that it previously fought against.
In 2016, Apple joined 67 other companies in a legal challenge to fight North Carolina’s bathroom bill, HB2. In addition, many also stopped and withdrew business deals with the state that caused allegedly $3.7 billion in business losses.
The bill that started all of that controversy was set to ban transgender and gender nonconforming people from using any bathroom besides ones aligning with the sex assigned to them at birth.
Eventually that bill was repealed thanks to the help of new Democratic Governor Roy Cooper. That said, Copper had to compromise in order to take the bill down. That led to the agreement that no more anti-discrimination laws could be passed until 2020.
As Mashable reports though, we can’t thank Cooper entirely for protecting LGBTQ people in the state of North Carolina. Copper has also helped pass legislation that allows LGBTQ residents in the state to be fired from their jobs based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
With HB2 gone, some companies have returned to North Carolina and it looks like Apple might be one of them. Apple is currently just looking at coming back to North Carolina, but many are worried about what this move could mean.
Will Apple bring more positive change to the state or is it essentially selling out? We’ll see as time continues.
h/t: Mashable