Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake has suspended all city-sponsored travel to North Carolina and MS due to the states’ new transgender laws.
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As it has been reported that North Carolina risks losing millions of dollars in federal education funding if it does not back down, Graham, the president of the Charlotte-based Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and president of Samaritan’s Purse, took to Facebook to praise state officials for not backing down from federal “bullying”.
Since he signed the bill over former colleagues’ objections, North Carolina has emerged as a national political battleground, with businesses withdrawing plans to expand into the state and entertainers like Bruce Springsteen, Demi Lovato, Nick Jonas, Pearl Jam and Boston canceling scheduled performances. “We are confident that the law will not survive court scrutiny and that this controversy will end with the recognition that – as the assistant attorney general said – all North Carolinians ‘deserve to live with dignity'”.
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.
McCrory noted he was “sensitive” to the needs of transgender people, suggesting adding unisex restrooms or showers at universities in the state.
McCrory told reporters that the Obama administration was radically reinterpreting the Civil Rights Act by including transgender people as a protected group. “I also think that the laws that have been passed there are wrong”.
Loretta Lynch from DOJ took the spotlight to explain the departments lawsuit – and her passionate speech is one of the most spine-tingling public moments in the recent history of the trans movement. Lawsuits for and against the law have also been filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, leaders of the Republican-controlled state Legislature, and a conservative legal organization.
The letter says cabinet members shouldn’t make travel requests to the two states “until the situation changes”.
A North Carolina native herself, Lynch says the DOJ lawsuit against the state is in response to governor Pat McCroy attempting to move forward with implementing legislation that is in “direct opposition to federal laws prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex and gender identity”.
Vanita Gupta, head of the Justice Department’s civil rights division stated Monday, that the lawsuit “speaks to all of us who have ever been made to feel inferior – like somehow we just don’t belong in our community, like somehow we just don’t fit in”.
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In turn, the Justice Department filed a civil rights countersuit, charging that the law is discriminatory. “Transgender men are men – they live, work and study as men”. “It’s the federal government being a bully”.
