Attorney General Loretta Lynch said Monday, in announcing the lawsuit against the state, that federal laws give the government power to cut off federal funding for education when civil rights laws are violated.
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Earlier on Monday, Republican Gov. McCrory and North Carolina Department of Public Safety Secretary Frank Perry filed a declaratory judgement action, which asks federal courts to clarify whether the Obama administration’s interpretation of Title VII and Title IX is consistent with federal law. The federal lawsuit calls House Bill 2-which blocks local anti-discrimination measures as well as requiring transgender individuals to use bathrooms that match up with the gender on their birth certificate-“impermissibly discriminatory”, the BBC reports.
“This action is about a great deal more than bathrooms”.
She said it serves only to harm innocent Americans..
The rhetoric was perhaps fitting given what’s at stake – billions of dollars in aid for North Carolina are up in the air, and there’s the potential for a landmark decision regarding the reach of the nation’s civil rights laws.
Led by Governor Pat McCrory, North Carolina officials sued the U.S. Justice Department on Monday for challenging the state’s law on public restroom access. Cutting off funding would be part of the same, unfounded attempt to extend protections to transgender people by re-interpreting civil rights beyond what Congress intended as the Justice Department is attempting, the lawmakers said in a letter. “It is now a national issue”, he said. There are only two ways to reverse this bad damage: “The state should repeal this discriminatory law or the courts should strike it down”. The series of lawsuits has the United States claiming that the law violates federal civil law, and North Carolina claiming that it doesn’t.
Defenders of the law have argued that it is needed to safeguard people’s privacy and protect them being molested in restrooms.
The US Justice Department has filed a lawsuit against North Carolina over its controversial anti-LGBT law, calling it “state-sponsored discrimination”.
Allowing “anyone to use any public bathroom, locker room or shower based exclusively on that person’s self-declared gender “identity” would “create an opportunity for sexual predators of any sexual orientation to abuse the policy to facilitate their predation”, they warned.
A graduate looks up from a sea of caps during the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill spring commencement ceremony at Kenan Memorial Stadium on Sunday, May 8, 2016 in Chapel Hill, NC. PayPal and Deutsche Bank have publicly protested the bill by suspending expansion plans into the state, directly influencing the business ecosystem. Almost four out of 10 said cities should have that leeway.
Legal experts, citing a recent transgender rights case in Virginia, say McCrory has an uphill battle, and that it is telling what his complaint leaves out, not just what it charges.
“Passing the Equality for All Act, along with the repeal of HB2, is essential to ensure the protection of all North Carolinians and restore North Carolina’s image”, Democratic House leaders said in a release.
Watch Lynch’s speech below.
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The Justice Department suit says the law has caused transgender people to suffer “emotional harm, mental anguish, distress, humiliation, and indignity”.
