Drug company reconsidering $20M North Carolina factory

Associated Press

RALEIGH, N.C.

North Carolina’s governor met Thursday with gay-rights advocates bearing a letter signed by more than 100 corporate executives urging him to repeal the nation’s first state law limiting the bathroom options for transgender people.

The law also excludes lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people from anti-discrimination protections and blocks municipalities from adopting their own anti-discrimination and living wage rules.

The governor “appreciated the opportunity to sit down and deal with these complex issues through conversation and dialogue as opposed to political threats and economic retaliation,” his spokesman, Josh Ellis, said in a statement.

The advocates declined to describe Gov. Pat McCrory’s response.

Some companies already are reconsidering doing business in the country’s ninth-largest state.

New Jersey-based Braeburn Pharmaceuticals said it is “re-evaluating our options based on the recent, unjust legislation” whether to build a $20 million manufacturing and research facility in Durham County. The 50 new jobs paying an average of nearly $76,000 a year were announced two weeks ago.

Lionsgate, the California-based entertainment company, had been lining up hotel and equipment rentals and hiring more than 100 workers in North Carolina, but decided to shoot its pilot episode for a comedy series in Canada instead, said Jennifer Irvine, a Charlotte production coordinator.