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
The full case challenging the bill is expected to go to trial in November.
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 violates federal law, in part because of how an appeals court with jurisdiction over North Carolina has ruled in a Virginia teen’s case.
“While the court granted a limited injunction for three individuals”, Berger and Moore said in a joint statement.”we are pleased it preserved the commonsense protections to keep grown men out of bathrooms and showers with women and young girls for our public schools and for almost 10 million North Carolinians statewide”.
For now, the decision is a victory for three transgender students in the UNC school system who are part of the case, as well as advocates of the LGBT community. “Today, the tightness that I have felt in my chest every day since HB2 passed has eased. But the fight is not over: we won’t rest until this discriminatory law is defeated”, Carcano said in a statement.
North Carolina is just one of several states now embroiled in litigation regarding the legality of bathroom freedom for transgender individuals, but it might have the highest profile.
Lawmakers in several other USA states have proposed similar legislation – sometimes referred to as “bathroom bills”.
Bob Stephens, general counsel for the governor’s office, noted the limited scope of the ruling on Friday and said in a statement that McCrory would continue to defend the law.
-Hunter Schafer, a transgender girl at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts High School in Winston-Salem.
The University of North Carolina did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Pat McCrory, Republican legislative leaders, and a citizens group.
Court documents of the ruling explain that HB2 requires “public agencies to ensure that multiple occupancy bathrooms, showers, and other similar facilities are “designated for and only used by” persons based on their ‘biological sex, ‘ defined as the sex listed on their birth certificate”.
Three lawsuits are now underway in federal district court in North Carolina, challenging HB 2 under both the U.S. Constitution and federal law.
Schroeder, who was appointed by President George W. Bush, wrote that “the court has no reason to believe that an injunction returning to the state of affairs as it existed before March 2016 would pose a privacy or safety risk for North Carolinians, transgender or otherwise”.
“The judge took real care in looking at the facts”, she said.
Schroeder said the three “are likely to succeed” in their lawsuit arguing that H.B.
Advertisement
“A school system could say: ‘The writing is on the wall, and we can’t lawfully enforce HB2, ‘” she said.
