In his ruling Friday, U.S. District Judge Thomas Schroeder also said the plaintiffs have a strong chance of proving the state’s bathroom-access measure violates federal law. In their request for immediate relief from the law while awaiting trial, they sought to block only the so-called bathroom provision.
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HB2 requires that transgender individuals use public restrooms and similar facilities based on their anatomy and not their gender identity.
They said they feared that predatory men could pose as transgender people and use legal protections as a cover. Transgender residents challenging the law say that restroom safety is protected by existing laws, while the North Carolina measure is harmful and discriminatory.
The lead plaintiff said this about the small victory: “Today is a great day for me, and hopefully this is the start to chipping away at the injustice of HB2 that is harming thousands of other transgender people who call North Carolina home”.
“Today, the tightness that I have felt in my chest every day. has eased”.
In writing his decision, Schroeder relied heavily on a ruling by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in the case of G.G. v. Gloucester County School Board, in which the 4th Circuit found that Virginia transgender high school student Gavin Grimm would be likely to succeed in his claim that his local school board’s policy on transgender students is discriminatory.
“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”.
Initially, University of North Carolina President Margaret Spellings indicated in a letter to chancellors the school would enforce the anti-trans portions of HB2, but in a later legal filing conveyed the school wouldn’t comply with the statute. “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.
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.
“Ultimately, the record reflects what counsel for Governor McCrory candidly speculates was the status quo ante in North Carolina in recent years”, writes Schroeder.
But the plaintiffs argued in court papers, “By singling out LGBT people for disfavored treatment and explicitly writing discrimination against transgender people into state law, HB 2 violates the most basic guarantees of equal treatment and the US Constitution”.
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In Friday’s ruling, Schroeder wrote that the challengers “are likely to succeed” in their arguments that HB2 violates Title IX, a federal law prohibiting gender discrimination in educational institutions. “We’re confident justice will prevail in the larger case after the judge hears all the evidence at trial this fall so that all gay and transgender North Carolinians will be free from the harm of HB 2”.
