This is true everywhere in the sense that there's absolutely no upside to giving someone a bad references. About all you can do for someone terrible is confirm

This is true everywhere in the sense that there's absolutely no upside to giving someone a bad references. About all you can do for someone terrible is confirm factual data and refuse to comment on any opinion based questions. The requester can't even interpret that as a negative endorsement because lots of companies only do the same thing for good candidates.