North Carolina Limits on Transgender Rights Appear Headed for Repeal

By RICHARD FAUSSET
DEC. 19, 2016 - The New York Times

The North Carolina legislature plans to hold a special session Wednesday to consider fully repealing the contentious law curbing legal protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. The move comes after the Charlotte City Council rescinded a local anti-discrimination ordinance on Monday that had prompted passage of the statewide law in March.

Governor-elect Roy Cooper, a Democrat, said in a statement Monday morning that Republican legislative leaders had “assured” him that a special session would be called “to repeal H.B. 2 in full.” Mr. Cooper won the Nov. 8 election after arguing that the law, known as House Bill 2, H.B. 2 or “the bathroom bill,” had embarrassed the state, cost it thousands of jobs and set off an exodus of high-profile sporting events.

“I hope they will keep their word to me and, with the help of Democrats in the legislature, H.B. 2 will be repealed in full,” Mr. Cooper’s statement said. “Full repeal will help to bring jobs, sports and entertainment events back and will provide the opportunity for strong L.G.B.T. protections in our state.”

A spokesman for the departing Gov. Pat McCrory said Monday that the governor would call a special session on Wednesday. But in a sign of the continuing acrimony between Democrats and Republicans, State Representative Tim Moore, the House speaker, and State Senator Phil Berger, the Senate president, said the governor-elect was “not telling the truth about the legislature committing itself into session. We’ve always said that was Governor McCrory’s decision, and if he calls us back, we will be prepared to act.”

Mr. Cooper’s announcement came after the Charlotte City Council, by a vote of 10 to 0, rescinded the anti-discrimination ordinance it had passed on Feb. 22. At the time, Mr. McCrory, a Republican, had warned the City Council that if it passed the measure, which allowed transgender people to use the restroom that best corresponds to their gender identity, North Carolina’s lawmakers would respond with “immediate state legislative intervention.”

The measure was hastily signed by Mr. McCrory in March after it was introduced by Republicans in a special session of the General Assembly. That incited a backlash, with companies announcing they would not bring new jobs to North Carolina and performers like Bruce Springsteen canceling concerts. The N.B.A. moved its 2017 All-Star Game to New Orleans and the National Collegiate Athletic Association and the Atlantic Coast Conference announced that they would move championship sporting events out of the state. The Justice Department sued the state over the law, as did a number of North Carolina residents represented by lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union and the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, a gay-rights group.

The state law requires people in publicly owned buildings to use restrooms that correspond with the gender listed on their birth certificates. It also nullifies local ordinances like the one passed in Charlotte that established anti-discrimination protections for L.G.B.T. people.

The law came on the heels of a number of high-profile cultural milestones, including the 2014 debut of the Amazon television show “Transparent,” about a transgender woman, and the 2015 public coming out of the Olympic gold medalist Caitlyn Jenner (formerly Bruce Jenner).

In North Carolina, anger over the law and the backlash it engendered is widely believed to have been the most important factor in propelling Mr. Cooper to victory when other Democrats, including the presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and a candidate for United States Senate, Deborah Ross, were defeated in the state.

Since Election Day, the state has been engulfed in political turmoil. Mr. McCrory refused to concede the close election for nearly a month, as his allies filed challenges, most of which proved baseless or negligible, to election results in a number of counties. Last week, the Republican legislature voted to curb Mr. Cooper’s power, a move Democrats angrily referred to as a “power grab.”

A repeal of House Bill 2, however, could help both legislative and executive branches. Republicans in the General Assembly would not have to worry about Mr. Cooper using the controversial law to raise money and bludgeon them rhetorically.

And Mr. Cooper could claim an early victory, after apparently helping to broker a deal between Republican leaders and the City of Charlotte.

“Despite the efforts of Republicans to diminish what he can do, it shows he remains relevant,” said Ferrel Guillory, the director of the Program on Public Life at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He added, “The governor retains informal powers: the power of persuasion, to use the bully pulpit, to put a coalition together.”

Mr. McCrory leaves office on Jan. 1. On Monday, a spokesman, Graham Wilson, said in a statement that the governor had “always advocated a repeal of the overreaching Charlotte ordinance.” Mr. Wilson said that Democrats, including Mr. Cooper and Mayor Jennifer Roberts of Charlotte, had blocked those efforts for political gain.

Mr. Berger and Mr. Moore said Mr. Cooper and Ms. Roberts had engaged in a “political stunt to drive out-of-state money into the governor’s race.” They said it was “disingenuous and dishonest” of Mr. Cooper to take credit for brokering a solution. “For months,” they said, “we’ve said if Charlotte would repeal its bathroom ordinance that created the problem, we would take up the repeal of H.B. 2.”

But Chad Griffin, the president of the Human Rights Campaign, a national group that fights for L.G.B.T. rights, said on Monday that lawmakers had never promised a full repeal of the law, as they were apparently doing now.

Mr. Griffin said that if the legislature carried out a full repeal, it would signify the end of “the most vile and hateful and discriminatory anti-L.G.B.T. bill in the history of the country today,” and that he hoped the repeal of the law would open the door for “fully inclusive” local and statewide anti-discrimination measures.

The Charlotte City Council, in a resolution on Monday, reaffirmed its opposition to discrimination based on, among other things, “sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression.” Elsewhere, it stated that if H.B. 2 were repealed, the City Council could “enact new ordinances.”

It also said that the repeal of its own ordinance would not be valid if the General Assembly refused to repeal the statewide law in its entirety by Dec. 31.

Also Monday evening, Mr. McCrory said he had signed a remaining portion of the package of legislation, approved by the General Assembly on Friday, that strips many powers from Mr. Cooper. The bill would, among other things, reduce the number of state employees who serve at the governor’s pleasure from 1,500 to 425, take away Mr. Cooper’s ability to fill seats on the boards of state universities and require that members of his cabinet be approved by the State Senate.