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butthurt [soylentnews.org] writes:

A new law called HB 2 (PDF) [foxrothschild.com] has been passed [theguardian.com] by Republican legislators in the U.S. state of North Carolina and signed by the state's governor Patrick McCrory [wikipedia.org], who is also a Republican. Democratic members of the state senate, unusually, had walked out in protest, with their leader calling the session a "farce," hence the vote was unaninously in favour.

In February, the city of Charlotte had enacted [foxnews.com] (archived copy for Tor users) [archive.is] a measure, set to take effect 1 April, that would have permitted people to use any public restrooms, regardless of which gender the restrooms were intended for. Governor McCrory had written to the city council, objecting to

[...] this action of allowing a person with male anatomy, for example, to use a female restroom or locker room [...]

prior to passage of the measure.

The state law overrides that measure, requiring people to obey (with some exceptions) signage at "multiple occupancy" public restrooms and "changing facilities." The definition it uses is:

Biological sex.

The physical condition of being male or female, which is stated on a person's birth certificate.

The state law quickly drew opposition. The CEO of PepsiCo wrote a letter to the governor [theguardian.com]; executives who work at Box, Salesforce, Levi Strauss, Airbnb, Barnes and Noble, Kellogg, EMC, Facebook, Northrop Grumman, Atlassian, Apple, Square, Twitter, Lyft, Dropbox, Y Combinator, Reddit, Herbalife, Uber, Tumblr, Hyatt Hotels, Starwood Hotels, Intel, Qualcomm, Cisco, Starbucks, IBM and other companies have signed [recode.net] a letter (PDF) [amazonaws.com] promulgated by the Human Rights Campaign [wikipedia.org] and Equality North Carolina [wikipedia.org] saying that

[...] HB 2 is not a bill that reflects the values of our companies, of our country, or even the overwhelming majority of North Carolinians [...]

and calling it "bad for business."

The investment firm GV, formerly known as Google Ventures, announced [recode.net] that it will not invest in companies from North Carolina while the law remains in force. GV currently has no investments in the state.

North Carolina is a major centre for research and high-technology industry [wikipedia.org] in the United States.

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