North Carolina’s governor has defended the law as a necessary response to an ordinance in the state’s largest city of Charlotte that expanded legal protections for people’s sexual orientation and gender identity.
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McCrory instead doubled down by filing a federal lawsuit arguing that the North Carolina law is a “commonsense privacy policy” and that the Justice Department’s position is “baseless and blatant overreach”.
It is this very provision that the Department explains is unlawful discrimination.
US Attorney General Loretta Lynch said on Monday the department “retains the option” of curtailing federal funding to North Carolina unless it backs down.
The federal government is now officially involved in the pushback against North Carolina’s law discriminating against LGBT folk.
“This law provides no benefit to society, and all it does is harm innocent Americans”, said Lynch in a speech that dismantled all of the fear-mongering, compassionless nonsense that accompanied the passage of HB2. This is about the dignity and the respect that we accord our fellow citizens and the laws that we as a people and as a country have enacted to protect them, indeed, to protect all of us.
Senate leader Phil Berger and House Speaker Tim Moore also filed a complaint giving their own set of reasons why a court should declare that HB2 complies with federal law.
The governor says his lawsuit asks a federal court to clarify what the law actually says with billions in federal aid at stake.
Mr. McCrory recently said he wouldnt agree that the law is discriminatory, setting up an nearly certain court battle. Virginia is seeking a re-hearing by the entire appeals court.
The state’s public university system was expected to issue a separate response Monday to the Justice Department warning letter it received.
Earnest says the Justice Department’s action was taken “independent of any sort of political interference or direction from the White House”.
Assemblyman David Chiu, D-San Francisco, said he was co-authoring the legislation on behalf of “thousands of transgender individuals in the state of California who feel unsafe in bathrooms, who feel harassed in bathrooms, who are questioned when they walk into a bathroom”.
McCrory said the fight over the bathroom law has broad implications, stating: “This is not just a North Carolina issue, ” he said.
North Carolina is suing the U.S. department of justice over its attempts to bar the state upholding the “bathroom Bill” requiring transgender people to use public toilets corresponding with the sex listed on their birth certificates.
It also invalidated several local anti-discrimination measures that protected gay and transgender people.
In a statement, McCrory reiterated his belief that “this is now a national issue” that “needs to be resolved at the federal level”. The Justice Department had sent letters warning the state that its law violated the civil rights of transgender people.
UPDATED 12:50 p.m. – The U.S. Justice Department has scheduled press conference with Attorney General Loretta Lynch and other officials to announce a “law enforcement action related to North Carolina”.
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The vote came hours after North Carolina’s governor sued the federal government to defend a law in that state requiring transgender people to use the restroom matching the sex on their birth certificate. Meanwhile, businesses are leaving the state in protest, and the ncaa is threatening to move its games out of state. “The Obama administration can not unilaterally rewrite federal statute or reverse-engineer congressional intent”.
