Yelp is expected to announce Tuesday that it will cover expenses for its employees and their spouses who must travel out of state for abortion care, becoming the latest company to respond to a Texas law that bans the procedure after about six weeks of pregnancy.
The online search and review platform, which is based in San Francisco and has more than 4,000 workers, employs just over 200 in Texas, but the benefit extends to employees in other states who might be affected by “current or future action that restricts access to covered reproductive health care,” a company representative said.
Last month, Citigroup became the first major bank to disclose that it will pay travel costs for employees affected by the law in Texas, where it has over 8,000 workers. Other companies that have announced policies aimed at mitigating the impact of the law include Uber and Lyft, which offered to pay legal fees for Texas drivers who could be sued for taking someone to an abortion clinic.
A Texas legislator warned Citigroup that he would introduce a bill to prevent the bank from underwriting municipal bonds in the state unless it rescinded its expense policy. While “backlash gets a lot more attention,” Yelp is not concerned about how its program, which starts next month, will be received, said Miriam Warren, the company’s chief diversity officer. She and other executives have received many personal notes thanking Yelp for taking a stand on abortion, she said.
Under the new policy, Yelp employees will be able to submit receipts for travel expenses directly to their health insurance company, Ms. Warren said. “So no one else at Yelp is ever going to know who is accessing this, or how or when, and it will be a reimbursement that comes through the insurance provider directly,” she said.
The median income at Yelp was $92,000 in 2020, according to regulatory filings, and companies where employees earn higher wages are often the most vocally opposed to legal restrictions on abortion. Yet those restrictions disproportionately affect lower-income women who cannot afford the extra travel or the days off work to make the trip, Professor Myers said.
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