The U.S. Justice Department alleged in a lawsuit Monday that the 17-campus University of North Carolina and other state agencies observing the state law are violating federal civil rights laws.
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In response, the state of North Carolina countersued the Justice Department for “overreaching”. “This discriminatory law not only runs counter to the basic principles of equality, fairness, and justice”, the organizers said.
McCrory’s office filed a lawsuit Monday against the federal government, asking a federal court to rule whether or not the Obama administration’s interpretation that gender identity is protected under Title VII is consistent with the actual wording of the law.
Lynch announced the state’s Department of Public Safety, and the University of North Carolina and Board of Governors of the University of North Carolina were also named in the lawsuit alongside Gov McCrory. “That means a court will try to deal with it rather quickly, so I suspect that within this month we should have a preliminary answer”, Hostin said.
But McCrory rebutted Wednesday, “Whether a boy can go into girls restroom – to correlate that to the civil rights movement – is totally irresponsible for the chief legal officer of the United States of America”.
“Let us reflect on the obvious but often neglected lesson that state-sanctioned discrimination never looks good in hindsight”, Lynch said.
For weeks, opponents to HB2 have warned that the law jeopardizes federal funding for schools, roads and other programs due to federal officials previously ruling that laws protecting people from discrimination based on sex include gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people. Pat McCrory said in a statement.
North Carolina’s House Bill 2 has been facing criticism since it was passed in late March.
In the state’s suit, McCrory and Perry criticized the federal government for what they call a “radical reinterpretation” of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which they contend would “prevent plaintiffs from protecting the bodily privacy rights of state employees while accommodating the needs of transgender state employees”. Earlier, the ordinance was supposed to be implemented across the state, but later its enforcement was limited to government premises. It says that the Justice Department’s move is an attempt to “unilaterally rewrite long-established federal civil rights laws”.
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The department declined to say whether it would take legal action, but the letters suggest it is willing to do so, setting the stage for a potentially costly court fight over an issue that has already sparked several boycotts against the state.
