Tech Leaders Call for Anti-Discrimination Laws to Protect Gays in all 50 States

Technology leaders are looking beyond an Indiana battle over gay rights that united them, and are calling on all states to enact anti-discrimination protections for lesbians, gay, bisexual and transgender people. More than three dozen chief executives and other senior Silicon Valley leaders issued a joint statement on April 1, asking state legislatures to add sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classes to their civil rights laws. Max Levchin, a co-founder of PayPal and the chief executive of Affirm, a payments start-up, organized the statement, which was signed by the chief executives of Twitter, Airbnb, Lyft, Evernote, Salesforce.com, Yelp and other companies.