While I applaud the elected officials of my home state for their efficiency-it took them less than two days to travel to Raleigh in the middle of an official recess and vote on the bill, whereas raising teacher pay more than a token amount required six years of effort-I decry every facet of the law they approved. “Unfortunately, we were up against a conservative House, Senate, and a governor who has been relying on disgusting, fear-mongering, anti-transgender rhetoric to fuel his re-election campaign”.
Advertisement
The NBA said via Twitter that it is “deeply concerned that this discriminatory law runs counter to our guiding principals of equality and mutual respect and do not know what impact it will have on our ability to successfully host the 2017 All-Star game in Charlotte”.
South Dakota would have been the first state to pass a bill outlawing transgender public school students from using restrooms and lockers rooms consistent with their chosen gender identity.
Common sense has prevailed in North Carolina, where legislators on Wednesday put an end to local governments’ anti-discrimination rules that would’ve allowed transgender people to use restrooms depending on their gender identity.
The events are scheduled for next February, and there have already been calls for the league to move them out of North Carolina because of the law.
A spokesman for Gov. Pat McCrory said he was not in the home during the Thursday evening protest.
Despite every single Democrat walking off of the Senate floor, McCrory said in his statement that the legislation passed with a “bipartisan majority”, perhaps referring to the dozen Democrats who supported the bill in the House. Republican lawmakers warned that Charlotte’s “radical” action would create a public safety issue by giving men, including sex offenders, access to women’s bathrooms if allowed to take effect on April 1.
On the other hand, some say the governor and General Assembly did the right thing by blocking the ordinance.
“Corporate leaders are speaking out against bills that could allow individuals and businesses to discriminate against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people and other minorities – versions of which are actively being considered in states across the country”, the companies said.
The payments processor PayPal said last week it plans to hire 400 employees at a new Charlotte operations center.
“I am so disappointed in the governor and legislature of North Carolina”.
Men’s college basketball tournament games are planned in Greensboro in 2017 and Charlotte in 2018.
Furthermore, the bill prevents local governments from writing and passing policies in favor of anti-discrimination that go beyond that statewide precedent-which essentially claims to cover everyone while conveniently leaving out LGBTQ residents.
“Rather than expand nondiscrimination laws to protect all North Carolinians, the General Assembly instead spent $42,000 to rush through an extreme bill that undoes all local nondiscrimination laws and specifically excludes gay and transgender people from legal protections”, detailed Sarah Preston, acting Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of North Carolina, in a statement.
Advertisement
“Our commitment to the fair treatment of all individuals, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity, has not changed and is at the core of our NCAA values”, the NCAA said.
