How Others See Us (Editorial)

A group of Walmart employees.

The best, most stable businesses in Arkansas are the ones that were born here, and we have often wondered if the resources devoted to luring companies into Arkansas (often with promises of low wages) might be better spent on homegrown entrepreneurs.

But that’s a question for another day.

Right now Arkansas is getting attention from big businesses, and not in a good way. SB202, which became law last week without Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s signature, is called the Intrastate Commerce Improvement Act and its supposed purpose was to keep different cities in Arkansas from confusing companies by providing legal protection from discrimination for different classes of employees. Its real purpose and effect, of course, was to prevent any city from protecting homosexuals from workplace discrimination the way Fayetteville tried, unsuccessfully, to do.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. — a company that knows a bit about doing business in various jurisdictions without uniform laws and is normally a political force to be reckoned with in Arkansas — ultimately came out in public opposition to SB202. But it was too late to stop that train.

Wal-Mart also opposed another proposal, HB1228, that would also have the ultimate effect of protecting discrimination against gays, although it is couched as the “Conscience Protection Act.” Allowing cities to adopt differing ordinances on discrimination is unacceptably confusing, you see, but allowing every single Arkansan to let his conscience be his only guide when deciding who to discriminate against is not. HB1228 “sends the wrong message about Arkansas,” a Wal-Mart spokesman said.

Joining Wal-Mart in opposing it is Apple, another company of the sort we like to have doing business in Arkansas.

We hope that HB1228 will not join SB202 as unnecessary Arkansas law. But if it does, we hope that companies looking at Arkansas from the outside will remember: Neither of these bills requires any company or individual to discriminate against anyone.