Wednesday was a whirlwind day in North Carolina’s government. The legislature convened a special session, a complicated multi-part bill was introduced, it passed through the House and Senate — both Republican controlled — and Gov. Pat McCrory (R) signed it into law. Just like that, North Carolina became the state with the most hostile laws against LGBT people in the country.
Targeting Charlotte for passing its recent LGBT nondiscrimination ordinance, the sweeping legislation preempts municipal nondiscrimination ordinances, essentially making it illegal for cities and counties to extend protections to the LGBT community. Only two other states, Arkansas and Tennessee, have such a law, but North Carolina’s bill goes much further. It also bans transgender people from using restrooms that match their gender unless they’ve managed to change their birth certificate, and prevents civil suits from being filed in state court even when discrimination is documented by the already-poorly-funded Human Rights Commission. On top of all the anti-LGBT measures, the legislation went further and prohibited cities from mandating any employment compensation (minimum wage, benefits, etc.) beyond what is offered at the state level.
Gleefully signing the bill that he openly called for, McCrory claimed that “the basic expectation of privacy in the most personal of settings, a restroom or locker room, for each gender was violated by government overreach and intrusion by the mayor and city council of Charlotte.” Calling the ordinance a “radical breach of trust and security under the false argument of equal access,” he said that he believes it “defies common sense and basic community norms by allowing, for example, a man to use a woman’s bathroom, shower or locker room.”
In a video statement, Lt. Gov. Dan Forest (R) added that “the loophole this ordinance created would have given pedophiles, sex offenders, and perverts free reign to watch women, boys, and girls undress and use the bathroom.”
What is perhaps most troubling about the passage of this law in North Carolina is that it could pave the way for other states to also target the transgender community for discrimination. South Dakota’s may have been vetoed, but Tennessee’s supposedly dead bill has already been revivedthis week as several other states continue to introduce theirs.
Kansas lawmakers are considering a bill that would ban transgender people from bathrooms and allow people to sue schools and government agencies if they saw transgender people in their facilities. Republicans in Minnesota’s legislature have similarly introduced a bill targeting public restrooms — albeit without the lawsuit provision. And when the Michigan Department of Education announced this week that it was considering some protections for transgender students, it prompted a GOP backlash that could result in legislation to either overturn or block them.
What happened in North Carolina could prove to be the deadly recipe that helps these other discriminatory bills actually make it across the finish line.
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The very opposite is happening in Georgia. Gov. Nathan Deal (R) has until May 3 to consider an anti-LGBT bill that has been widely scorned. Just this week, Disney and Marvel promised to pull out of the state if he signs it, following pressure from other companies like Apple and the NFL that have made similar threats, including not bringing the Super Bowl to the state. This was after plenty of public debate during the many weeks the legislature spent considering and amending the bill.
The test for North Carolina will be to see what political and legal consequences there will be for the lawmakers who rushed this legislation through. Democratic National Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) scorned the Republican party for being “stuck in the Stone Age on LGBT equality.” Denouncing North Carolina’s lawmakers for “steamrolling over local officials just because they had the courage to stand up for transgender rights,” she promised that “our friends in the LGBT community deserve better and so do all the people of North Carolina.”
The key, I think, is for the companies and organizations that have been threatening action in Georgia now need to actually take those threatened actions in North Carolina, and they need to do it quickly and with as much fanfare as possible. There have to be consequences – not just at the ballot box, but right now – or else we will see this same sort of bill get pushed through in a lot of other states. And yes, that includes Texas. Our next legislative session is not for another ten months, by which time one hopes it has been made clear that this sort of legislation is Not Acceptable, but we could get a special session on school finance much sooner than that, and there’s no telling what could happen. Our legislative process is not designed to work in this kind of lightning-strike manner, but remember that the 2011 redistricting bills were passed during a special session with minimal public input. I can also easily envision some kind of amendment to a school finance bill that forbids ISDs from enacting anti-discrimination policies or accommodating transgender students. So don’t think this can’t happen here, or that it can’t happen before next year. It can, and it will if we’re not ready for it. TPM, Daily Kos, The Slacktivist, and Slate have more.
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