San Francisco’s Boycott of Republican States Backfires

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to repeal an ordinance banning or restricting travel and business contracts in states claimed by the city to have discriminated against LGBTQ+ individuals and enacted restrictive reproductive rights and voting rights legislation, citing negative economic impact.

The board voted 7-4 to repeal a section of the administrative code known as 12X that upon its adoption in October 2016 restricted travel to and contracts awarded to eight states with laws that the board said discriminated against LGBT people, as well as prohibited the city from contracting with companies headquartered in those states. The number increased to 30 states by the end of 2022.

San Francisco Mayor London Breed, according to the Associated Press, is expected next week to sign the repealing of 12X, which had the opposite effect of its original intentions.

A reversal of the ban or boycott could lead to a 20 percent reduction in annual contracting costs, the city reported last month, concluding that “no states with restrictive LGBTQ rights, voting rights, or abortion policies have cited the city’s travel and contract bans as motivation for reforming their law.”

States with stricter abortion laws, or that have banned the procedure altogether, have drastically increased since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision last summer. Since the start of 2021, at least 21 states had enacted 42 laws restricting access to voting, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, including a minimum of 33 laws in effect in 20 states during the 2022 midterm elections.

A policy analysis support conducted by the Budget and Legislative Analyst’s Office found that the city and county of San Francisco issued 478,304 contracts and purchase orders with a value of $62.9 billion between February 2017—when 12X became effective—and June 2022.

“However, in spite of the new law and the substantial value of the City’s contracts and purchase orders, a system was not established to identify whether departments were complying with the Chapter 12X bans or whether they had issued waivers from the requirements when their contractors and vendors were headquartered in banned states,” the report said.

Also, while available records showed that at least 150,126 contracts were issued to companies with headquarters in California and consistent with 12X, another 246,644 contracts and purchase orders located outside California “included some in banned states.” Records of all such waivers were not readily available.

Code 12X was authored by current California state Senator Scott Wiener and adopted in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court‘s legalization of same-sex marriage.

The ordinance has been amended twice: in 2019 to expand the travel and contracting ban to include states with restrictive abortion laws; and in 2022 to include states with restrictive voting laws.

Strategy ‘does not work and has not worked’

Board supervisors who voted to repeal 12X were President Aaron Peskin, Rafael Mandelman, Ahsha Safaí, Hillary Ronen, Catherine Stefani, Matt Dorsey and Joel Engardio.

Supervisor Rafael Mandelman said that Wiener’s original intent was for a coalition to come together to pressure states.

“I think the evidence is that as a strategy it does not work and has not worked in the time 12X has been in effect,” Mandelman said Tuesday. “We have continued to add new categories of legislation that are truly horrific and that we should do everything we can to continue to fight.”

Using city contracts to fight back against the claimed infringing of rights only raises the cost of running San Francisco government, he said, referring to waivers that generated $1 billion in 12X states in the span of one previous year.

“It’s not achieving the goal we want to achieve,” he said. “It is making our government less efficient.”

Dorsey concurred, saying a lot of work was originally done to reach out to the various communities 12X was intended to protect and support.

“The evidence is we haven’t changed a single state law,” Dorsey said. “We have made competitive bidding less competitive. And I think San Franciscans would be angry if they knew the amount of hoops that had to be jumped through and the added costs to city contracting.”

Wiener said in a statement that 12X didn’t reach its goals, according to AP.

“We believed a coalition of cities and states would form to create true consequences for states that pass these despicable, hateful laws,” Wiener said. “Yet, as it turned out, that coalition never formed, and the full potential impact of this policy never materialized.

“Instead, San Francisco is now penalizing businesses in other states—including LGBTQ-owned, women-owned, and people of color-owned businesses—for the sins of their radical right-wing governments.”

Supervisor Shamann Walton, who voted against the measure, said more study and analysis is required to determine the impacts on local LGBTQ+ individuals and small businesses, saying it “could really backfire.”

Supervisor Connie Chan, also a “no” vote, said she would like to see ways to “accomplish the intent” of the travel and contracting bans once they are repealed, which occurs 30 days after the mayor signs it.

John Sovec, a California-based psychotherapist and author who has written about LGBTQ+ topics, told Newsweek via email that a more focused campaign—perhaps similar to musician Lizzo bringing out drag queens in a show last Friday to protest the state’s public drag queen laws—could provide additional LGBTQ+ visibility and a continued focus on the marginalizing of the queer community.

“It is challenging to see these boycotts being repealed and at the same time recognize that they made little to no effect on boosting the rights and visibility of LGBTQIA+ people,” Sovec said. “Psychologically, this feels like a defeat for LGBTQIA+ people to realize that the strength of hatred and fear mongering is stronger than the support inferred by these bans.”

Newsweek reached out to all San Francisco board members and Wiener via email for comment.