A judge has ruled that three transgender people – two students and one employee – at the University of North Carolina must be allowed to use the bathrooms corresponding to their gender identities.
Advertisement
In the 81-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Thomas Schroeder said it is likely that the transgender challengers will succeed in their argument that HB2, as the law is known, violates federal law, in part because of how an appeals court with jurisdiction over North Carolina has ruled in a Virginia teen’s case.
Schroeder temporarily blocked the University of North Carolina from enforcing the so-called HB2 law as the larger case makes its way to trial in November.
“Judge Schroeder rightly recognized that transgender people in North Carolina, and all over the nation, have been using restrooms that match their gender identity without issue”, National Center for Transgender Equality Executive Director Mara Keisling said in a statement, “and that HB2 interferes with transgender people’s ability to work and learn and endangers their health”.
In April, the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals became the first appeals court to find that transgender students are protected under federal laws that bar sex-based discrimination. Schroeder said from the record he had so far, the equal protection claims did not seem likely to succeed, but he didn’t weigh in on the due process allegations.
Legislators in North Carolina enacted the law after the town of Charlotte passed a bill allowing transgender people to use toilets according to gender identity. Pat McCrory earlier this year – which subsequently drew an Obama administration lawsuit. The survey showed the incumbent governor trailing his Democratic opponent and found that 70 per cent of North Carolina voters felt the bathroom measure had hurt the state’s reputation nationally.
UNC system President Margaret Spellings has said the university system does not plan to enforce HB2, noting that the law contains no enforcement measures. “It sends a signal to the state and the rest of the country, most of whom are deeply opposed to this that we’re really not going to have this on the books that much longer”, said North Carolina Senator Jeff Jackson.
The judge said his order effectively returned all involved to the status quo before the law passed, “wherein public agencies accommodated the individual transgender plaintiffs on a case-by-case basis, rather than applying a blanket rule to all people in all facilities under all circumstances”. He also wrote that under HB 2, the three plaintiff, “will suffer irreparable harm in the absence of preliminary relief” and “an injunction is in the public interest”.
They offered no evidence of anyone being harmed by transgender residents using bathrooms that did not match their birth certificates.
Advertisement
Carcano was represented in part by the American Civil Liberties Union, which praised the ruling.
