Dear Editor:
Recently, PayPal announced plans to open a new global operations center in Charlotte and employ more than 400 people in skilled jobs. In the short time since then, legislation has been abruptly enacted by the state of North Carolina that invalidates protections of the rights of LGBT citizens and denies these members of our community equal rights under the law.
The new law perpetuates discrimination and it violates the values and principles that are at the core of PayPal's mission and culture. As a result, PayPal will not move forward with our planned expansion into Charlotte.
This decision reflects PayPal's deepest values and our strong belief that every person has the right to be treated equally, and with dignity and respect. These principles of fairness, inclusion and equality are at the heart of everything we seek to achieve and stand for as a company. And they compel us to take action to oppose discrimination.
Our decision is a clear and unambiguous one. But we do regret that we will not have the opportunity to be a part of the Charlotte community and to count as colleagues the skilled and talented people of the region. As a company that is committed to the principle that everyone deserves to live without fear of discrimination simply for being who they are, becoming an employer in North Carolina, where members of our teams will not have equal rights under the law, is simply untenable.
While we will seek an alternative location for our operations center, we remain committed to working with the LGBT community in North Carolina to overturn this discriminatory legislation, alongside all those who are committed to equality.
We will stand firm in our commitment to equality and inclusion and our conviction that we can make a difference by living and acting on our values. It's the right thing to do for our employees, our customers, and our communities.
Dan Schulman
President/CEO, PayPal
Spy response
The Chicago Sun-Times posted a story recently detailing Chicago Police Department ( CPD ) activities aimed at monitoring the activities of protest groups, especially African-American groups, in the aftermath of the release of the Laquan McDonald video in November 2015. The Sun-Times story describes the CPD making "plans to have undercover officers spy on protest groups." The following can be attributed to Karen Sheley of the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois.
The recent reports about the level and breadth of police monitoring of peaceful protest groups is unsettling and requires a response. Thousands of Chicago residents have joined protests in recent months demanding a more accountable, more transparent policing system in the City, and these protests have been conducted largely in a peaceful, considerate fashion. Rather than being dangerous, it has been inspiring to see so many young people take a leadership role in helping to plan and shape these activities.
The exercise of one's protected First Amendment rights should not be a catalyst for a police investigation, whether overt or the covert insertion of undercover officers inside an organization. Such spying on peaceful protesters chills speech. The ACLU strongly opposes police officers attending meetings and collecting information on people organizing to exercise their First Amendment rights.
Given Chicago's bleak history of using undercover officers to investigate and infiltrate peaceful groups simply for opposing policies emanating from City Hall, there must be strong, written guidelines for guarding against abuses in the use of police to investigate these sorts of activities. Washington, D.C., for example, has a protective ordinance requiring "reasonable suspicion of a crime" before beginning the kind of investigations described here. Chicago used this standard for decades, but since the dissolution of a long-standing federal consent decree in June 2009, the standard of "a legitimate law enforcement purpose" has guided the CPD's decisions for whether to spy on political movements. That standard is too low and nebulous, and inevitably leads to the kind of troubling spying reported here.
The ACLU of Illinois urges the Chicago City Council to hold hearings into these investigations as a precursor to considering written, formal guidelines, adopted by the Council that can help assure every person in Chicago that exercising free speech is not a predicate for a criminal investigation.
Edwin C. Yohnka
Director of Communications
and Public Policy
American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois