North Carolina repeals ‘bathroom bill’ but GLAAD, ACLU still unhappy

Thursday North Carolina lawmakers passed a bill that repeals the state’s bathroom law in a move meant to end a year of protests by gay activists and leftists boycotting buisnesses and big events, like the NCAA, refusing to schedule in the state.

Gov. Roy Cooper signed the measure into law, saying, “For over a year now, House Bill 2 has been a dark cloud hanging over our great state. It has stained our reputation. It has discriminated against our people and it has caused great economic harm in many of our communities.”

Cooper said the new law is “not a perfect deal and it is not my preferred solution” as Republicans hold a supermajority in the Legislature and opposed the wide open transgender access in bathrooms, locker rooms and schools as activists have called for.

“Nobody is 100% happy, but I will say I’m 95% happy,” said House Speaker Tim Moore, a Republican who supported the compromise.

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“Sadly, North Carolina has failed families by giving in to hypocritical bullies like the NCAA and billion-dollar corporations. Every North Carolinian deserves to have their privacy respected in intimate settings like locker rooms and restrooms,” said Alliance Defending Freedom Legal Counsel Kellie Fiedorek.

“One of government’s essential duties is to protect the citizens it governs, not to create uncertainty about whether showers and locker rooms will still be safe for women and girls. North Carolina’s economy is booming, so the state should not let the NCAA and others dictate the state’s policies and sell out their citizens’ interests based on flat-out lies about an economic doomsday that never happened.”

House Bill 2 required that people at a government-run facility must use bathrooms and locker rooms that correspond to the gender on their birth certificate, if the rooms in question are multiple-occupancy. This measure also prevents local governments, until December 2020, from passing or amending their own nondiscrimination ordinances relating to private employment and public accommodation.

LGBT groups and other HB2 critics said the deal is a “repeal” in name only: “This so-called ‘deal’ is politics at its worst and was only made as the state faced losing key NCAA events and further economic damage. What we witnessed was a last-minute idea thrown together with little thought of protecting transgender residents,” GLAAD said.

“Disappointed the #NCGA just voted for a bill which fails to end LGBT discrimination in a move to put basketball over civil rights. #ncpol,” the ACLU said on Twitter.

The basketball reference is a nod to the NCAA, which moved 2016-2017 championship events out of the state because of HB2 and said it would soon decide where 2018-2022 championships will be held.