Legislation preventing North Carolina local governments from approving their own regulations covering sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination has cleared one chamber of the General Assembly. The Republican-controlled state legislature had called an emergency session on Tuesday to pass the bill, at a cost of $42,000, in order to quash an anti-discrimination ordinance set to take effect in Charlotte on April 1.
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North Carolina legislators have approved a bill that prevents cities and counties from passing their own anti-discrimination rules, including a measure that allows transgender people to use the restroom aligned with their gender identity. Republican leaders at the General Assembly scheduled a one-day session after enough lawmakers requested to reconvene.
The move came in response to such a provision approved last month in Charlotte, the state’s largest city, as part of an expanded nondiscrimination ordinance that also added protections for marital and familial status, sexual orientation, gender expression and gender identity. And public schools, public college campuses and government agencies must require bathrooms or locker rooms be designated for use only by people based on their biological sex.
“Every single comment from a Republican who supported the special session was about the Charlotte ordinance until the day of the session, at which point it became about something much bigger”, he said. Democrats refused to vote on the bill and walked out. Those rights are now nullified, despite little evidence that non-discrimination laws like Charlotte’s would negatively affected anyone.
“McCrory’s reckless decision to sign this appalling legislation into law is a direct attack on the rights, well-being and dignity of hundreds of thousands of LGBT North Carolinians and visitors to the state”, Human Rights Campaign President Chad Griffin said in a statement. Any final legislation would go to Gov. But McCrory said in a release “the basic expectation of privacy in the most personal of settings” was violated by “government overreach and intrusion” by Roberts and the city council.
Representatives for gay-rights groups said overturning the ordinance is wrong and demonizing the transgender community.
The bill establishes a person’s biological sex as that stated on their birth certificate.
Apparently, the bill was specifically created to override an ordinance in Charlotte, N.C., that would protect LGBT people from “discrimination in housing and public accommodations”.
The Charlotte law would allow individuals to use any bathroom of the gender with which they identify.
“In all the years I have served in the General Assembly I have never seen such a negative reaction to an ordinance passed by a municipality”.
The bill also included a section on wage and hour laws, where local governments could not impose conditions on how a business pays its employees. Critics said that could jeopardize federal funding for education. Pat McCrory was expected to sign it before the end of the night.
Democratic Attorney General Roy Cooper, who’s running for governor, called today’s vote “shameful”.
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They say no public safety risks had resulted in the more than 200 US cities that have enacted protections similar to those passed in Charlotte. In an attempt to rush the bill through, the House Committee limited speakers to two minutes and legislators only had five-minutes to review the bill. Such concerns doomed other “bathroom bills” in South Dakota and Tennessee in recent weeks.
