These 59 Companies Fought the Anti-Trans Bathroom Bill in 2016. In 2025, They're Silent.

In the weeks after North Carolina s Republican-led state legislature passed its infamous bathroom bill banning transgender people from using the bathroom aligned with their gender major companies and their CEOs tripped over themselves to denounce it PayPal canceled its planned expansion into North Carolina The NCAA pulled its seven tournaments from the state And companies including Apple Yelp American Airlines and Nike signed an amicus brief with the Obama-era Department of Justice denouncing the law Late last month the Texas Legislature passed its own inarguably harsher version of the bathroom bill But in the first year of a second Trump administration hellbent on targeting the trans population those corporate crusaders have been notably quieter The Intercept reached out to of the companies whose names appeared on the amicus brief in the other nine had gone out of business been acquired by larger corporations or spun off into separate subsidiaries to get their thoughts on the Texas bill Their response crickets Except for Affirm and TD Bank which both declined to comment none of the corporations responded to our inquiry or issued prominent general statements against the bill The rise and fall of corporate help for things like LGBTQ rights and representation shows how weak corporations advocacy for LGBTQ rights is announced Joanna Wuest an assistant professor of women s gender and sexuality studies at Stony Brook University Wuest who has been researching corporate aid for LGBTQ rights since mentioned that she used to find the decline surprising But by now she finds the lack of sponsorship from the companies standard Those companies are Accenture Affirm Airbnb American Airlines Apple Biogen Bloomberg LP Boehinger Ingleheim USA Box Capital One Financial Corporation Cisco Systems Consumer Instrument Association Corning Incorporated Cummins Dropbox Dupont eBay Etsy Everlaw Expedia FiftyThree Gap General Electric Company Glassdoor Grokker Hilton Worldwide Honor IBM Corporation IKEA North American Services Instacart Intel Corporation John Hancock Levi Strauss Co LinkedIn Corporation Logitech Marriott International Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company Microsoft Mitchell Gold Bob Williams Morgan Stanley Nextdoor Nike PayPal Quotient RBC Capital Markets Red Hat Replacements Ltd Salesforce Slack SV Angel TD Bank NA The Dow Chemical Company Thermo Fisher Scientific ThirdLove Tumblr United Airlines Williams-Sonoma Yelp ZestFinance and Zynga The Intercept first reached out to of the companies between August and September ZestFinance and RBC Capital Markets were contacted on September and Box was contacted on September The greater part were reachable via email but three companies Accenture Slack and Yelp had to be contacted via web form The Intercept followed up with all of the companies that did not provide comment The Intercept was unable to reach SV Angel and Quotient Slack was acquired by Salesforce but was contacted separately by The Intercept Related Corporate Pride Is Dying Good In the past year corporate sponsorship for transgender and LGBTQ rights has dropped precipitously A survey of more than corporations by Gravity Research a risk-management advisory firm detected that roughly percent of companies planned to reduce Pride Month-related engagement in the first months of the second Trump administration Major corporations including Budweiser brewer Anheuser-Busch ended their aid of Pride festivals across the country this year And several companies have ended their participation in the Human Rights Campaign s Corporate Equality Index which rates companies based on their remedy of LGBTQ employees One simple way of putting it is that a multitude of of these corporations just don t see the added benefit to putting themselves on the line anymore revealed Wuest An obvious part of the equation is President Donald Trump This current administration has made it a mission to impose harsh consequences on those who patronage and protect transgender people s rights to exist freely and thrive noted Heron Greenesmith the deputy director of agenda at the Transgender Law Center in a announcement More broadly the administration has targeted companies and nonprofits showing any advocacy for marginalized communities Jared Todd a press secretary for the Human Rights Commission which authored the amicus brief stated The Intercept in a message that the Trump Administration s baseless crusade against diversity and inclusion has led to businesses operating in fear and uncertainty trying to piece together the constantly moving threats from countless executive orders and DOJ guidance In the past Wuest revealed companies tried to curry favor with more progressive consumers and employees and viewed promotion for trans rights as beneficial to their brands But the right s relentless targeting of companies that have shown a modicum of help for the LGBTQ society have flipped their perceived incentives They re making considerations based on conservative boycotts she mentioned pointing to protests against Target and Budweiser as examples That makes even advertising appeals to the queer communities to be fraught Past corporate activism on behalf of transgender rights was arguably performative but it was at times incredibly consequential North Carolina was forced to repeal its law or lose out on billions in revenue from the corporate backlash In South Dakota then-Gov Kristi Noem now the secretary of Homeland Assurance vetoed a bill banning trans girls and women from playing sports with their gender after facing important backlash from the state s chamber of commerce in Corporate activism can have huge effects but at the same time it s ultimately downstream from a lot of bottom-line interests and so when those things disappear the corporations aren t going to put their necks out explained Wuest At present states have chosen iteration of the transgender bathroom ban first modeled in North Carolina Related Republicans Launch Midnight Attack on Strength Care Access for Trans Americans In the scenario of Texas the consequences for both transgender and cisgender Texans are dire The bill which passed after roughly attempts from conservative legislators over the last decade would ban trans people from using general bathrooms locker rooms and even prisons and jails that align with their gender Unlike the North Carolina version the Texas bill would also impose crucial penalties for establishment agencies and population institutions that allow trans people to use facilities that match their gender The fine is for first-time offenders and for the second time the preponderance notable penalty of any of the states with similar bans The implications for trans intersex and nonbinary people in Texas are staggering this bill deputizes a legion of potty-police who are incentivized to tattle on anyone whom they suspect is trans or nonbinary using the bathroom wrote Greenesmith of the Transgender Law Center Gender nonconforming people of every gender cis trans and nonbinary alike will face the ramifications of this bill The post These Companies Fought the Anti-Trans Bathroom Bill in In They re Silent appeared first on The Intercept