Transgender rights are as inevitable as same-sex marriage, and no amount of hand-wringing by conservatives will stop the tide. If you don’t believe it, do what Deep Throat said about Watergate: follow the money. The NBA hastily withdrew its big money All-Star weekend extravaganza from North Carolina after the state passed a bathroom law seen as discriminating against transgender people. Now transgender teen Gavin Grimm is fighting his battle against school bathroom choice with the help of the richest friends anyone could ask for.
The amicus brief (“friend of the court” brief) put together on Grimm’s behalf by the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) includes 53 companies who signed on in support of the transgender teen’s case (Gavin Grimm in G.G. v. Gloucester County School Board). Some names you might recognize? How about Amazon, Microsoft and Apple? “These companies are sending a powerful message to transgender children and their families that America’s leading businesses have their backs,” HRC President Chad Griffin says in the announcement. According to HRC, the brief — written by the law firm BakerHostetler — was signed by:
- Affirm, Inc.
- Airbnb, Inc.
- Amazon.com, Inc.
- Apple
- Asana, Inc.
- Box, Inc.
- Codecademy
- Credo Mobile, Inc.
- Dropbox, Inc.
- eBay Inc.
- Etsy
- Fastly, Inc.
- Flipboard, Inc.
- Gap Inc.
- General Assembly
- GitHub, Inc.
- IBM
- Intel Corporation
- Kickstarter
- PBC
- Knotel, Inc.
- Lyft
- M Booth
- MAC Cosmetics Inc.
- Mapbox, Inc.
- Marin Software Incorporated
- Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance
- Microsoft Corporation
- Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams
- MongoDB Inc.
- NetApp, Inc.
- Next Fifteen Communications Corporation
- Nextdoor
- Pandora Media, Inc.
- PayPal Holdings, Inc.
- Postmates Inc.
- Replacements, Ltd.
- RetailMeNot, Inc.
- Salesforce
- Shutterstock, Inc.
- Slack Technologies, Inc.
- Spotify
- The OutCast Agency
- The WhiteWave Foods Company
- Tumblr, Inc.
- Twilio Inc.
- Twitter Inc.
- Udacity, Inc.
- Warby Parker
- Williams-Sonoma, Inc.
- Yahoo! Inc.
- Yelp Inc.
- Zendesk, Inc.
