We posted in
February and
October about how San Francisco's boycott of other States backfired in a tangle of red tape and higher costs. After seven years the Board of Supervisors
repealed the law.
The boycott law was originally passed by supervisors in 2016 and first applied only to states that had restricted LGBTQ rights after the Supreme Court’s 2015 decision legalizing same-sex marriage across the country. Supervisors amended the law in subsequent years to apply also to states that placed new limits on abortion access and voting rights.
A central goal of the boycott was to put pressure on other states, but a recent report by City Administrator Carmen Chu’s office found that only one state had been removed from the list and none ever said they changed their laws because of San Francisco’s. Additionally, the report found that the law made city contracting a more cumbersome and expensivere process.
An earlier report from the board’s Budget and Legislative Analyst found that implementing the boycott had cost the city nearly $475,000 in staffing expenses. And the city was approving a large number of exemptions to the boycott anyway: Departments granted 538 waivers for contracts worth $791 million between mid-2021 and mid-2022, the report found.
If San Francisco had given any thought to how people change their thoughts and minds, San Francisco would have tried to engage in discussions and allay opponents' fears. Instead it resorted immediately to the bully-and-boycott approach. The latter failed, and I'm glad it did even though I agree with some of the principles that San Francisco espouses.
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