MAY 9, 2016
Photo: AP
As a refreshing change from discussing Donald Trump, let’s talk about bathrooms.
Last week, the Department of Justice, under the watch of Attorney General Loretta Lynch, issued a warning to North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory that he must issue a non-enforcement policy on HB2, the controversial (and likely unconstitutional) state law that demands that transgender citizens can only use the bathroom that corresponds to the gender listed on their birth certificate. His rationale for signing the law was to protect little girls who would be molested if men dressed up in poodle skirts were allowed to use the ladies’ room, a crime that has happened exactly nowhere and seems to exist only in Gov. McCrory’s head.
The DOJ’s deadline for complying with their order was 5pm on Monday, prompting Gov. McCrory to complain to the U.S. Government that three business days to decide was not enough time to deal with such a complex bill. (Remember, that HB2 was introduced, passed by the legislature and signed by McCrory within hours.) DOJ then offered McCrory a face-saving off-ramp, proposing that he could get an extension of the deadline if he would at least acknowledge that the anti-transgender measure was discriminatory.
Gov. McCrory’s response on Monday morning was to file a lawsuit against the Federal Government, alleging that Title 7, the civil rights act that protects citizens from discrimination based on sex, does not apply to transgender individuals. The response from the Justice Department was strong and swift, as Atty. Gen. Lynch called a press conference to explain that the North Carolina law…
“…violates rights of transgender individuals who simply seek to engage in the most private of functions in a place of safety and security, a right taken for granted by most of us.”
With that, the Department of Justice filed its own lawsuit against McCrory and North Carolina, citing both Title 7 and Title 9, which allows the Government to withhold Federal money to states and schools that discriminate on the basis of sex. This means that the University of North Carolina stands to lose a $1.4 billion grant that covers $800 million in student loans. From Gov. McCrory’s attitude at Monday’s news conference, the loss of such funds and damage to the state’s reputation is water off his back.
It seems not to matter to McCrory that, because he signed HB2 into law, North Carolina has become a pariah in the business community, with several companies, including PayPal, cancelling their plans to settle in the state, a move which would cost North Carolina hundreds of new jobs. Tens of top musicians have already cancelled concerts in the state, and the National Basketball Association has intimated that, unless HB2 was repealed, the NBA would move the financially-lucrative 2017 NBA All-Star Game out of Charlotte. And McCrory doesn’t seem to be bothered by the condemnation of such teeny-weeny companies as Google, Apple, Hilton, Bank of America, Uber, Starbucks, Hyatt, Twitter, Pepsico, Dow, Kellogg’s and American Airlines. I guess that he thinks that North Carolina doesn’t need the likes of them.
All of this suffering appears to be due to the fact that Gov. McCrory is in a tough race for re-election against the state’s Democratic Attorney General Roy Cooper, who has vowed not to enforce HB2. McCrory, who originally ran as a Republican business-friendly moderate, now has to prove his conservative bona-fides to the party’s right-wing, and what better way to prove that you have balls than to attack the transgender community?
A word about U.S. Attorney General Lynch. Her speech today was eloquent and powerful, and it was arguably the strongest support I’ve ever heard from a Government official toward the transgender community. Her message was essentially… “we’ve got your back.” And more importantly, she suggested that the real crime that we need to worry about is not the imaginary man-in-a-dress hunting for schoolgirls but the very real possibility of a transgender woman being forced to use the men’s room and being pummeled to a bloody pulp by a transphobic thug. No other high official has suggested it before, and I doubt anyone will say it as well. That’s the real story of the day and one that I hope will be covered tomorrow.
