53 Corporation file Amicus Brief Supporting Gavin Grimm's Case at Supreme Court

The bigoted and spineless Gloucester County school board

Corporate America has increasingly supported LGBT rights in case ranging from Eddie Windsor's case challenging DOMA to the 2015 marriage equality case before the U.S. Supreme Court to now transgender rights in G.G. v. Gloucester County.  In the latter, 53 corporations - many are tech firms - joined in an amicus brief supporting Gavin Grimm's arguments.  Some are truly major players such as Apple, IBM Corporation, Microsoft and Massachusetts Mutual.   A piece in USA Today looks at the signories of the brief which can be found here:

The 53 mostly tech companies that signed an amicus brief in support of the case of Gavin Grimm, a Virginia high school student who sued after his school district denied him access to the restroom corresponding to his chosen gender.

1. Affirm, Inc. 2. Airbnb, Inc. 3. Amazon.com, Inc. 4. Apple 5. Asana, Inc. 6. Box, Inc. 7. Codecademy 8. Credo Mobile, Inc. 9. Dropbox, Inc. 10. eBay Inc. 11. Etsy 12. Fastly, Inc. 13. Flipboard, Inc. 14. Gap Inc. 15. General Assembly Space, Inc. 16. GitHub, Inc. 17. IBM Corporation 18. Intel Corporation 19. Kickstarter, PBC 20. Knotel, Inc. 21. LinkedIn Corporation, a subsidiary of Microsoft Corporation 22. Lyft 23. M Booth 24. MAC Cosmetics Inc. 25. Mapbox, Inc. 26. Marin Software Incorporated 27. Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance 28. Microsoft 29. Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams 30. MongoDB Inc. 31. NetApp, Inc. 32. Next Fifteen Communications Corporation 33. Nextdoor 34. Pandora Media, Inc. 35. PayPal Holdings, Inc. 36. Postmates Inc. 37. Replacements, Ltd. 38. RetailMeNot, Inc. 39. Salesforce 40. Shutterstock, Inc. 41. Slack Technologies, Inc. 42. Spotify 43. The OutCast Agency 44. The WhiteWave Foods Company 45. Tumblr, Inc. 46. Twilio Inc. 47. Twitter Inc. 48. Udacity, Inc. 49. Warby Parker 50. Williams-Sonoma, Inc. 51. Yahoo! Inc. 52. Yelp Inc. 53. Zendesk, Inc.

The companies joining in the brief stated their interest in the issue as follows:

Amici share core values of equality, respect and dignity for all people, regardless of their gender identity.  Amici support and defend public policies that protect civil rights and foster acceptance and equal treatment for all of their employees, their customers, and the families of both.
 Many amici employ and/or serve transgender people, and all amici are concerned about the stigmatizing and degrading effects of the policy adopted by the Gloucester County School Board (the “Policy”), which restricts access to public school restrooms for transgender youth. The Policy, and the policies and statutes of other government entities that would be permitted if the Policy is sustained, adversely affects amici ’s businesses, employees, and customers, and undermines amici ’s ability to build and maintain the diverse and inclusive workplaces that are essential to the success of their companies. 

Fifty-three significant companies and employers opposing the embrace of ignorance and discrimination juxtaposed against a spineless School Board that allowed one two bit right wing part time pastor to whip the local community into a frenzy of hatred.  It's little wonder that Gloucester county is a backwater and likely to remain one for a long. long time.