San Francisco's Boycott of Republican States Backfires
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.
