The
lawsuits marked a sharp escalation in the fight between the two sides
over an issue that has become the epicenter of LGBT rights.
- By Mark Berman and Sarah Larimer
- 5 minutes ago
- ACLU files suit challenging Miss. law letting businesses refuse to serve gay people
North Carolina, Justice Dept. file dueling lawsuits over transgender rights
North Carolina and the Justice Department announced dueling lawsuits on Monday, a sharp escalation in a confrontation over the state’s so-called “bathroom bill” that has become the epicenter of a larger fight over transgender rights.Attorney General Loretta Lynch announces lawsuit against N.C.
Play Video1:30The Justice Department announced May 9 that it was filing a countersuit against the state of North Carolina, following a lawsuit by the state seeking to enforce the so-called "bathroom bill." (Reuters)
The two complaints, filed several hours apart, took opposing sides of the debate over a North Carolina law that bans transgender people from using bathrooms that don’t match the gender on their birth certificates. While the state said its law did not discriminate against transgender people or treat transgender employees differently from non-transgender employees, the Justice Department’s civil rights office said the measure is discriminatory and violates civil rights.
“This action is about a great deal more than just bathrooms,” Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch said during a news conference after the Justice Department’s lawsuit was filed. “This is about the dignity and respect we accord our fellow citizens and the laws that we, as a people and as a country, have enacted to protect them.”
Both lawsuits came five days after the Justice Department sent a letter to North Carolina Gov. McCrory (R) calling on him to say that he would abandon the law, which has been pilloried by rights groups and businesses alike. Officials had said that if North Carolina resisted the letter, they were prepared to bring a lawsuit and possibly strip federal funding. In her letter, Vanita Gupta, head of the Justice Department’s civil rights division, gave McCrory until the close of business Monday to say he would not comply with or implement the measure, known as House Bill 2 or “H.B. 2.”
[Yes, the feds could pull North Carolina’s education funding for violating transgender civil rights]McCrory responded Monday morning by filing a lawsuit against the Department of Justice in federal court. In his complaint, McCrory (R) accused the federal government of “baseless and blatant overreach,” and he later said he was filing the lawsuit to help stave off uncertainty sparked by the debate and to ensure that North Carolina does not lose out on federal funding until the issue is resolved in court.
“We believe a court rather than a federal agency should tell our state, our nation and employers across the country what the law requires,” McCrory said during a news conference Monday afternoon. He added: “Right now, the Obama administration is bypassing Congress by attempting to rewrite the law and set basic restroom policies….for public and private employers across the country.”
Hours later, the Justice Department filed its own lawsuit, one that accused McCrory and other state officials of utilizing “a facially discriminatory policy of treating transgender individuals, whose gender identity may not match their birth certificates, differently from similarly situated non-transgender individuals.”
This action marks the second high-profile confrontation between Lynch and the Tar Heel State, as they are facing off in a fight over voting rights. Lynch touched on this issue on Monday, announcing that the Justice Department is appealing a federal court’s decision to uphold North Carolina’s voting rights law, among the most restrictive in the country.N.C. governor McCrory defends bathroom law
Play Video4:09North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory (R) defended the state's controversial bathroom law on May 9, asking Congress to weigh in. (Reuters)
In her public remarks Monday about North Carolina, Lynch — a North Carolina native and measured speaker — was unusually passionate and, at times, personal during the news conference. She addressed part of her news conference directly to residents of North Carolina and to the transgender community, stating that the lawbrings “inflict further indignity on a population that has already suffered far more than its fair share.”
Lynch also linked H.B. 2 with a dark legacy that included Jim Crow laws and resistance to the Brown v. Board of Education decision.
“It was not so very long ago that states, including North Carolina, had signs above restrooms, water fountains and on public accommodations keeping people out based upon a distinction without a difference,” Lynch said.
Gupta said Monday that calling H.B. 2 a “bathroom bill,” as it has become commonly known, “trivializes” the measure’s true impact, which she said could impact state employees, students and sports fans alike.
“It speaks to all of us who have ever been made to feel inferior – like somehow we just don’t belong in our community, like somehow we just don’t fit in,” Gupta said. “Let me reassure every transgender individual, right here in America, that you belong just as you are.”
The Justice Department’s lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina, directly followed through on what Gupta had hinted in her letter last week. She had written that the Justice Department believed North Carolina was violating Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by “engaging in a pattern or practice of discrimination against transgender state employees” and threatened possible court action. In addition to Title VII, it accused the North Carolina Department of Public Safety, the University of North Carolina and that institution’s board of governors of violating Title IX and the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2013.
McCrory was not the only official in the state to receive a Justice Department letter about the bathroom law. Officials also sent letters to the state’s Department of Public Safety and the University of North Carolina. Frank L. Perry, secretary of the public safety department, joined McCrory in filing his lawsuit against the Justice Department.
Notably absent from McCrory’s complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina, was Margaret Spellings, president of the University of North Carolina system, who had said she would also respond by the Monday deadline. North Carolina receives more than $4 billion in federal education funding each year, much of it in the form of student loans, and the Education Department has said it is reviewing whether to withhold that money due to the bathroom law. The government has withheld funds from schools before over civil rights issues, holding back money from dozens of districts in Southern states that refused to desegregate in the 1960s.
In a letter to Gupta on Monday, Spellings said the UNC system takes seriously “its obligations to comply with federal non-discrimination statutes” and had scheduled a special meeting of its board of governors for Tuesday afternoon. Spellings said in a statement that the university “is truly caught in the middle” — stuck between adhering to state law and to being a welcoming home for its students — and said this meeting Tuesday would help determine UNC’s next steps.
The bathroom legislation in North Carolina has drawn intense opposition from business groups and, in at least two high-profile cases, cost the state jobs and money. After McCrory signed the law, PayPal and Deutsche Bank both said they were abandoning expansion plans in the state because of the measure. The companies had planned to employ hundreds of people in the state, and state officials had said these expansions would have brought millions of dollars to local economies. The National Basketball Association has also said it will move the All-Star Game from Charlotte next season if the law is not changed, while tourism agencies have said the legislation has cost the state millions in lost business and could lose it much more if other groups cancel events in the state.
Multiple federal agencies have said they are reviewing whether to withhold federal funding due to the state law, decisions that could impact billions of dollars that normally flow to North Carolina. The White House was critical of North Carolina’s decision Monday, with Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, saying during a briefing that the state was “asserting that this mean-spirited law is somehow consistent with the Civil Rights Act and with our values.” He said he did not know of any way the lawsuit had changed the ongoing reviews several federal agencies are conducting to consider withholding funding to North Carolina.
Before the Justice Department’s lawsuit was announced, McCrory said he filed his own legal action in response to the timetable laid out by the letter last week.
“I do not agree with their interpretation of federal law,” McCrory said during his news conference. “That is why this morning I have asked a federal court to clarify what the law actually is.”
McCrory said he had asked the Justice Department for an extension to the “unrealistic” Monday deadline and was turned down unless he made a statement agreeing that the measure was discriminatory.
“I’m not going to publicly announce that something discriminates, which is agreeing with their letter, because we’re really talking about a letter in which they’re trying to define gender identity,” McCrory said in an interview Sunday with Fox News. “And there is no clear identification or definition of gender identity. It’s the federal government being a bully.”
On Monday, Lynch suggested that federal officials were caught off-guard by the North Carolina lawsuit, saying that the Justice Department was still considering the extension when the state filed its complaint.
North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper (D), who will face McCrory in what is expected to be a close gubernatorial election in November, has said he will not defend the measure. He said Monday that McCrory was “pouring gas on the fire that he lit” by filing a lawsuit against the federal government.
“Instead of doing what’s right for our state, he’s doubling down on what he knows he did wrong,” Cooper said in a video message Monday. “Enough is enough. For decades, North Carolina has been a beacon in the south with great universities, technology and forward thinking leaders. But now, the governor is putting all that and more at risk with his partisan gamesmanship.”
The Justice Department and North Carolina are already facing off in a fight over voting rights, as the federal agency joined other groups to challenge a North Carolina voting signed by McCrory in 2013 that is among the strictest in the nation, prohibiting same-day registration and voting and reducing early voting. (The Justice Department’s lawsuit against North Carolina in the voting case was first announced under former attorney general Eric H. Holder Jr., Lynch’s predecessor.) A federal judge last month upheld this law, saying that “North Carolina has provided legitimate state interests” for its provisions. Civil rights groups have appealed the ruling in this case, which experts say could have legal ramifications for voting across the country during this election year, and Lynch said Monday the Justice Department is following suit.
Also Monday, the top Republicans in the North Carolina legislature — Sen. Phil Berger, president pro tempore of the state Senate, and Rep. Tim Moore, speaker of the state House — filed their own lawsuit against the Justice Department, arguing that the federal agency was violating the Tenth Amendment by trying to “impose novel and unforeseen interpretations” of civil rights statutes.
“It’s unacceptable for the Obama administration to try to intimidate North Carolina taxpayers into accepting their radical reinterpretation of a law meant to protect women from discrimination into a law that would actually deny women their right to basic safety and privacy,” Berger and Moore said in a statement.
In the ongoing fight over the bathroom law, McCrory said Monday the Justice Department had asked North Carolina officials to “set aside their constitutional duty and refuse to follow or enforce our state law.” As he did last week after receiving the letter, McCrory said that this has broad implications, stating: “This is not just a North Carolina issue. This is now a national issue.”
Until Monday, McCrory had not explicitly said how he planned to respond to the Justice Department’s letter, though he has repeatedly decried the Justice Department’s demand as government overreach. McCrory has repeatedly defended the state law, which he signed in March, as being what he called a necessary response to a Charlotte city ordinance that expanded civil rights protections for people based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
“After nearly eight years of federal overreach, we are seeing state leaders stand up to Barack Obama’s effort to fundamentally transform America,” Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, said in a statement. “I commend Governor McCrory for his political courage and moral clarity in resisting the Obama administration. If the White House can dictate the bathroom policies of America, what could possibly be beyond their reach?”
In a statement, Chad Griffin, president of the Human Rights Campaign, called the law “blatantly unconstitutional.”
“The idea Governor McCrory is going to waste even more time and millions more taxpayer dollars defending it is reckless and wrong,” Griffin said. “HB2 is a vile law attacking transgender North Carolinians and leaves many more unprotected from discrimination. Rather than defending it, Governor McCrory should be working with state lawmakers to fix the mess he’s created.”
Three groups challenging the bathroom measure in federal court — American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU of North Carolina and Lambda Legal — released a statement saying that McCrory “doubled down on discrimination” against transgender people with his suit Monday.
Today's Headlines newsletterThe day's most important stories.“Transgender people work for the state of North Carolina, attend school in North Carolina, and are a part of every community across the state,” the groups said in their statement. “It is unconscionable that the government is placing a target on their backs to advance this discriminatory political agenda. Lawsuits are normally filed to stop discrimination — not to continue it.”
Sari Horwitz, Niraj Chokshi, Emma Brown and David Nakamura contributed to this report.
How is bathroom access for transgender people a form of sex discrimination?
‘Bathroom law’ puts North Carolina governor in crossfire of GOP civil war
COPIADO ttps://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/05/09/north-carolina-justice-dept-face-monday-deadline-for-bathroom-bill/?hpid=hp_hp-more-top-stories_ncarolina-1020a%3Ahomepage%2Fstory
Nenhum comentário:
Postar um comentário