The North Carolina Chamber of Commerce president and CEO Lew Ebert spoke out Wednesday about the state’s controversial new anti-discrimination law, House Bill 2.
In an interview with local TWC News, Ebert said that the Chamber doesn’t think that House Bill 2 will be repealed and that the chamber is suggesting ideas to bring HB2 in line with federal government.
Ebert says that he would like to see NC’s employment anti-discrimination law to be for word-for-word with the federal Civil Rights Act. He also says that the chamber wants workplace line of action back in state courts, specifically business court.
The Human Rights Campaign and Equality NC blasted Ebert’s comments calling his partial solutions unacceptable.
“Refusing to call for full repeal of HB2, the North Carolina Chamber of Commerce’s leadership has succumbed to pressure from anti-LGBT state lawmakers, and even worse, decided that LGBT North Carolinians don’t deserve nondiscrimination protections,” said JoDee Winterhof, HRC Senior Vice President for Policy and Political Affairs. “The state’s chamber should instead be listening to the overwhelming outcry from the business community who are demanding HB2 be repealed. The only acceptable solution to the deep damage inflicted on the state by Governor McCrory is to fully repeal HB2 and replace it with commonsense, nondiscrimination protections for LGBT people.”
“It is clear that the North Carolina Chamber of Commerce is out of touch when 200 major CEOs have come out against HB2 — yet the Chamber’s leadership refuses to call for a repeal of HB2,” said Chris Sgro, Executive Director of Equality NC. “The NC Chamber of Commerce needs to reevaluate its commitments to economic, community, and workforce developments when it is clear that HB2 is bad for business, our community and the North Carolina economy. The NC Chamber of Commerce must take the situation at hand seriously and listen to the countless large and small businesses that have voiced their disagreement and have called for a repeal of HB2.”
In the fifty days since HB2 was signed into law, North Carolina has already lost more than a half billion dollars, or $10 million per day, in economic activity just from companies canceling or reconsidering plans to come to the state, and in cancelled conventions, concerts, and other lost tourism dollars. That doesn’t even include potential economic development that now just won’t happen in North Carolina because of McCrory’s radical law, or the potential catastrophic loss of federal funding for schools, roads, bridges, and other essential services. This is exactly why chambers like the Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce have called for full repeal.
Gov. McCrory and state lawmakers are under increasingly intense pressure to repeal HB 2, including from the U.S. Department of Justice which has filed a lawsuit against North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory, the state’s Department of Public Safety, and the University of North Carolina and Board of Governors of the University of North Carolina over HB2’s violations of federal civil rights law.
