North Carolina voted on Thursday to repeal HB2, a controversial law known as the “bathroom bill.” Republicans and the state’s new Democratic governor described the replacement, HB 142, as a compromise. Nevertheless, the replacement bill elicited strong criticism from a diverse coalition of sources since its introduction in the state senate on Wednesday night.
HB2, which passed in March 2016, was a state law that affected the LGBTQ and transgender community in two critical ways. First, it overturned and banned statutes protecting LGBTQ people from discrimination based on their sexual and gender identity. Second, it required individuals to use public bathrooms and locker rooms that correspond with the gender on their birth certificate in government-run facilities, including public schools, colleges and universities.
Transgender and LGBTQ advocates said that HB2 is discriminatory, and fought to see it repealed. Proponents of the bill said that it protects women and girls using public bathrooms and locker rooms from the threat of potential sexual predators.
HB 142 retains elements of HB2, including a three-year prohibition on municipalities from passing ordinances that would regulate private employment or public accommodations. In other words, cities would be barred from enacting measures that would protect LGBTQ rights as well as measures designed to protect workers or raise the minimum wage.
“The best thing North Carolina can do is to simply repeal HB2,” National Center for Transgender Equality Executive Director Mara Keisling said on Thursday.
The three-year moratorium would have an impact on liberal-leaning cities such as Charlotte, which passed an ordinance in February 2016 that protected LGBTQ individuals from discrimination and gave transgender people the right to use public facilities corresponding with the gender they identify with. HB2, which was intended to reverse Charlotte’s ordinance, took things a step further by placing a moratorium on similar ordinances on all municipalities.
“After more than a year of inaction, today North Carolina lawmakers doubled-down on discrimination and cemented North Carolina’s reputation as the worst state in the nation for LGBTQ people,” Human Rights Campaign President Chad Griffin said in a statement on Thursday afternoon. “This bill does nothing to repeal HB2. Instead, it institutes a statewide prohibition on equality by banning non-discrimination protections across North Carolina and fuels the flames of anti-transgender hate.”
