Lynch could have simply announced that the U.S. Department of Justice had filed a lawsuit against her home state of North Carolina declaring the state’s HB2 law “impermissibly discriminatory”.
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North Carolina officials also filed a lawsuit against the Justice Department, calling its position a “radical reinterpretation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act”.
On Monday, the Justice Department and North Carolina filed dueling lawsuits, setting the stage for a long legal battle that could be destined for the Supreme Court.
The leaders of the 17-campus University of North Carolina system say they are not violating federal anti-discrimination protections by following the state’s new bathroom access law, and are seeking legal representation in a lawsuit against federal authorities.
The showdown comes amid a wider debate on equal rights in the United States, where a flurry of initiatives have targeted the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) communities since a historic Supreme Court decision past year legalized same-sex marriage nationwide. “We saw it in the Jim Crow laws that followed the Emancipation Proclamation”, she said. But in a rejoinder, Lynch filed the US government’s own suit against McCrory and other state officials.
The issue before the courts is whether “sex” also applies to gender identity.
In most cases in which a conflict presents between state and federal law, the state law must yield, according to Article VI of the U.S. Constitution. Decisions at the appeals level can be appealed to the Supreme Court, but the Supreme Court agrees to hear only a small number of the pleas before it, and usually those were it decides the issue has a compelling national interest.
More than $4 billion is at state in federal funds for education in the Tar Heel State.
North Carolina’s senior senator said his state’s Gov.
North Carolina says its protecting people who feel their privacy may be violated and that the federal government is overstepping its authority.
“Instead of turning away from our neighbors, our friends, our colleagues, let us instead learn from our history and avoid repeating the mistakes of our past”.
“While other states are making it tougher and more political to use the bathroom, today we can make it easier for everyone to use the bathroom by simply changing the sign on the door and allowing anyone to use it”, the Los Angeles Times reported Assemblyman Phil Ting, D-San Francisco, said.
Buzzfeed’s Dominic Holden notes that “the Justice Department’s argument is not new to North Carolina”.
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McCrory said the Charlotte ordinance “caused major privacy concerns about males entering female facilities or females entering male facilities”.
