"Sex means a person's status as male or female based on immutable biological traits identifiable by or before birth," reads a copy of the Department of Health and Human Services memo obtained by the New York Times in October.

The industry response letter, which includes Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google among its 50-plus signatories representing close to 5 million employees, argues that "diversity and inclusion are good for business."

"Transgender people are our beloved family members and friends, and our valued team members," the statement read. "What harms transgender people harms our companies." The letter also points out steps major companies like these have already taken, such as that more than 80 percent of Fortune 500 companies have already established gender identity protections and that two-thirds offer transgender-inclusive healthcare coverage.

This isn't the first time that commercial entities have fought for transgender-inclusive protections. In 2017, Silicon Valley rallied against another civil rights rollback, which would have overturned an Obama era ruling that allowed students to use whichever bathroom best conforms to their gender identity. Unsurprisingly, a bunch of softball statements extolling the virtues of diversity that these companies adhere to failed to change the minds of an administration that's totally cool with putting brown kids in cages, so the policy change went ahead as scheduled.

However these same companies were able to more effectively exert their political influence during the North Carolina "bathroom bill" controversy, especially after PayPal announced that it would walk away from a 400-job Job-Ops center project if the bill was not scrapped. Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Cook and a dozen other Silicon Valley bigwigs also threw their support against a similarly discriminatory "bathroom bill" in Texas.

The full text of the letter can be found below: