Lack of LGBT protections drops Georgia down in business rankings

CNBC puts out an annual list of the nation’s top states to do business, and last year Georgia had a lot to crow about by nabbing the top spot, leading Gov. Nathan Deal to gush about the recognition in an editorial.

But this year, CNBC announced they would start considering LGBT anti-discrimination provisions as one of the 60 different metrics used to determine the rankings. We weren’t there to see what Gov. Deal’s reaction was to that news, but we imagine it went a little something like this.

So it’s no surprise that, considering Georgia is one of the five states without a hate crime law and one of the 28 states without an LGBT discrimination law among other things, that we slid from the top spot down to number five. Again, there are a lot of other metrics that go into the rankings but the LGBT factor no doubt had some bearing on the fall.

Deal recently backtracked on only supporting a so-called “religious freedom” bill if it had an anti-discrimination clause, so we’ll see if things like this add up enough to make him reconsider his reconsideration.

psaunders@thegavoice.com | @patricksaunders