Back in March, North Carolina’s Republican-dominated General Assembly passed one of the most outrageously anti-gay bills in the nation. Now, in the face of unrelenting pressure, the legislature is mulling changes to the bathroom bill.
WBTV in Charlotte got its hands on a draft bill crafted by the state house Republican leadership. Read it here. The draft would allow transgender people to use the bathroom of the gender with whom they identify if they get a notarized statement from a doctor stating that he or she has undergone sex reassignment surgery. This would qualify a transgender person to get a “certificate of sex reassignment,” which would be considered the equivalent of a birth certificate.
The draft proposal would also amend the statewide nondiscrimination law included in the original bathroom bill–or House Bill 2, as it is popularly called–to reference federal statutes protecting certain classes of people. It would also create a state “anti-discrimination task force” that would advise the legislature on how to improve North Carolina’s anti-discrimination laws.
Apparently, these changes didn’t come without some prodding. According to WBTV, the NBA has been leaning pretty heavily on both the legislature and Governor Pat McCrory to amend HB2. Charlotte is scheduled to host the 2017 NBA All-Star Game, but has sent some very loud hints that it could move the game if the bathroom bill is still on the books in its current form. A person close to the discussions said that the NBA wants anyone who attends an NBA game to use “the bathroom associated with their gender identity.”
While the draft bill would apparently help Charlotte’s case for going to the game, the most odious provision of the original bill remains untouched. Local governments would still be barred from passing their own nondiscrimination ordinances. Remember, HB2 was crafted specifically to derail a Charlotte ordinance that would have allowed transgender people to use the bathroom that matched their gender identity. Additionally, it leaves people who can’t afford to have sex reassignment surgery out in the cold.
Partly because of this, Democratic state representative Chris Sgro, who is also the executive director of Equality NC, slammed the proposal as inadequate. Watch his comments here, courtesy of The Charlotte Observer.
The ACLU of North Carolina isn’t pleased with this bill either, and called for a full repeal of the bathroom bill.
So-called #HB2 "fix" does nothing to restore or allow protections for #LGBT North Carolinians. The only answer is a full #RepealHB2 bill.
— ACLU of North Carolina (@ACLU_NC) June 28, 2016
You know what the bill’s supporters are going to say–these are just the rantings of those supporting a “radical homosexual agenda.” But North Carolinians as a whole aren’t too keen on this bill. A recent poll from Public Policy Polling, one of the most accurate pollsters in the business, found that only 32 percent of voters support the bill, and only 30 percent believe it has made North Carolina safer.
Unfortunately, the legislature is so outrageously gerrymandered that the Republicans think they can afford to stick their fingers in their ears. They do so at their peril. After all, North Carolina is part of the federal Fourth Circuit–and the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a Virginia transgender boy’s right to use the men’s bathroom. At some point, someone is going to challenge North Carolina’s bathroom bill, citing the Virginia ruling. The bottom line–the General Assembly needs to neuter or repeal this outrageous bill now to save itself the embarrassment of having it struck down for them.
