The Verge reports that Apple has joined in with 378 other companies, including Facebook, Google, and Microsoft, to push the Supreme Court to rule in favor of marriage equality.
The Verge:
The brief, which was filed today by law firm Morgan Lewis, actually makes a business case for legalizing same-sex marriage across the country. It claims that the currently muddled and confusing legal landscape surrounding same-sex marriage “places significant burdens on employers and their employees — making it increasingly hard to conduct business.”
The brief argues that the varied state laws around marriage equality make it difficult and more costly for companies to attract and recruit top talent, and then administer benefits to employees who aren’t allowed to marry.
The amicus brief was filed in the Supreme Court case of Obergefell v. Hodges, one of several cases that it will hear in April surrounding the marriage equality issue. The Supreme Court’s ruling is expected to decide whether the Constitution protects the rights of same-sex couples to marry regardless of what state they live in, or whether specific states are allowed to continue forbidding gay marriage.
At the moment, 36 states and Washington D.C. allow same-sex marriage.
Apple has been known to voice support for same-sex marriage in the past, and employees marched in the PRIDE parade in San Francisco last year. The company’s CEO Tim Cook came out as gay in an open letter in Bloomberg Newsweek last October.
Other companies who signed the brief include: Amazon, Apple, AT&T, Cablevision, Cisco, Cloudflare, Coca-Cola, Comcast, Cox, DirecTV, Dropbox, eBay, EA, Facebook, Google, Groupon, HP, Intel, Intuit, Levis, Microsoft, Orbitz, Pandora, Pepsi, Proctor & Gamble, Qualcomm, Twitter, Verizon, and Zynga. A full list of supporting companies can be found in the brief here.
