Two weeks ago, the Republican-dominated North Carolina General Assembly rammed through a monstrous and blatantly unconstitutional law that requires transgender people to use the public restroom corresponding with the gender on their birth certificate. Now, one state representative who supported this bill has publicly admitted that he completely screwed up by voting for this outrageous bill.
State representative Billy Richardson, who represents part of Fayetteville, was one of 12 Democrats who supported the now-infamous HB2. The bill rushed from the state house to Governor Pat McCrory’s desk in a mere 12 hours. However, in an op-ed that ran in Monday’s edition of The Fayetteville Observer, Richardson said he now recognized he was voting for a “travesty” when he voted aye. He said he was speaking out because his parents taught him “never, never to compound a mistake by sitting silent and failing to own up to the error.”
Richardson is an attorney by trade, and says he has “stood with the defenseless” for his entire career. HB2, he says, has “undermined a lifetime” of that work–and not just because it effectively writes discrimination into state law. He was also scathingly critical of provision that bar local governments from enacting non-discrimination ordinances and “close our courts” to people who have been the victims of discrimination.
Richardson spoke with CBS News about his change of heart on Tuesday. Watch here.
Richardson said that when his daughter found out her father was one of the 12 Democrats who supported the bill, she called him and told him she was “disappointed.” It made him “look in the mirror and reassess things”–and made him realize he’d screwed up royally.
Earlier on Tuesday, McCrory seemingly blinked when he issued an executive order that strengthened non-discrimination protections for LGBT state workers and asked the legislature to restore the right to sue in state court for wrongful termination. But Richardson doesn’t think it goes nearly far enough. On Wednesday afternoon, he announced that he will introduce legislation that will effectively neuter this outrageous bill. It would not only restore cities’ powers to enact non-discrimination ordinances, but would also restore the right to sue in state court for wrongful termination.
A number of people have slammed Richardson on both The Observer’s Website and on his Facebook page, saying he only did so because he stuck his finger in the wind in the face of an unrelenting backlash over the law. In my book, though, Richardson has a thousand times more courage than the three Republican state senators and two Republican state representatives who opposed calling a special session–only to vote for this monstrosity anyway. And he has a thousand times more courage than McCrory, who signed this bill into law after initially expressing concern that it went too far. Gee, I thought the GOP was supposed to be the party of personal responsibility.
It takes a real man to admit that he screwed up. Richardson is not only man enough to admit he screwed up, but is trying to make it right. Bravo, sir.
