By KATHLEEN HENNESSEY The Associated Press
AP photo
AP photo
Gov. Pat McCrory speaks Monday during a news conference in Attorney General Loretta Lynch speaks Monday during a news conference at the Justice Department in Washington, D.C. Raleigh, N.C.
By EMERY P. DALESIO and GARY D. ROBERTSON The Associated Press
RALEIGH, N.C. – A potentially epic clash over transgender rights took shape Monday when the U.S. Justice Department sued North Carolina over the state’s bathroom law after the governor refused to back down. In unusually forceful language, U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch said North Carolina’s law requiring transgender people to use public restrooms and showers corresponding to the gender on their birth certificate amounts to “state-sponsored discrimination” and is aimed at “a problem that doesn’t exist.” “What this law does is inflict further indignity on a population that has already suffered far more than its fair share,” she said, speaking directly to residents of her native state. “This law provides no benefit to society, and all it does is harm innocent Americans.” Billions of dollars in federal aid for North Carolina – and a potentially landmark decision regarding the reach of the nation’s civil-rights laws – are at stake in the dispute, which in recent weeks has triggered boycotts and cancellations aimed at pressuring the state into repealing the measure. Last week, the U.S. Justice Department said the law amounts to illegal sex discrimination and gave Gov. Pat McCrory until Monday to say he would refuse to enforce it. When the deadline arrived, a defiant McCrory instead sued the federal government, arguing that the state law is a “commonsense privacy
policy” and that the Justice Department’s position is “baseless and blatant overreach.” McCrory, a Republican who is up for re-election in November, accused the Obama administration of unilaterally rewriting federal civil-rights law to protect transgender people’s access to bathrooms, locker rooms and showers across the country. “This is not a North Carolina issue. It is now a national issue,” he said. Later in the day, the Justice Department struck back by suing the state, seeking a court order declaring the law discriminatory and unenforceable. A judge could begin hearing arguments in the competing cases within weeks, during which North Carolina probably will try to stop the government from temporarily blocking the law or stripping away federal funding, said Rina Lindevaldsen, a Liberty University professor specializing in family and constitutional law. With appeals courts around the country diverging on whether transgender people are protected under federal civil-rights laws, “this seems like the kind of thing that’s on track for the Supreme Court,” she said. Defenders of the law have argued that it is needed to protect people from being molested in bathrooms. North Carolina’s top legislative leaders, both Republicans, repeated that fear in their own lawsuit filed Monday in defense of the law. Allowing “anyone to use any public bathroom, locker room or shower based solely on that person’s self-declared gender ‘identity’” would “create an opportunity for sexual predators of any sexual orientation
to abuse the policy to facilitate their predation,” they warned. Lynch, however, said supporters of the law invented a problem “as a pretext for discrimination and harassment.” Stars such as Bruce Springsteen and Pearl Jam have canceled shows in North Carolina over the law. PayPal abandoned a planned 400-employee operation center in Charlotte, and Deutsche Bank froze expansion plans near Raleigh. Nearly 200 corporate leaders from across the country, including Charlotte-based Bank of America, have urged the measure’s repeal, arguing it is bad for business because it makes recruiting talented employees more difficult. The law, which took effect in March, was passed in reaction to a Charlotte ordinance allowing transgender people to use the bathroom that corresponds to their gender identity. The new law also excludes lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people from state anti-discrimination protection and bars local governments from adopting their own anti-bias measures. But the Justice Department has focused largely on the bathroom provisions. Nearly half of North Carolina registered voters last month said cities should be prohibited from passing ordinances such as Charlotte’s, according to a poll by Elon University. Nearly four out of 10 said cities should have that leeway. A CNN/ORC Poll released Monday found 57 percent of Americans oppose laws that require transgender people to use facilities corresponding with their sex at birth.
• Tuesday, May 10, 2016
U.S. sues North Carolina over its transgender bathroom law
WASHINGTON – The White House worked Monday to contain the damage caused by one of President Barack Obama’s closest aides, who, in a seemingly candid, behind-the-curtain magazine story, ripped the Washington press corps, boasted of creating an “echo chamber” of supporters to sell the Iran nuclear deal and appeared to dismiss longtime foreign policy hands, including Hillary Clinton, as the Blob. Deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes’ comments to The New York Times Magazine have sparked a mix of bewilderment and outrage in Washington’s political and policy circles. While some marveled at a savvy White House aide’s apparent eagerness to discuss what some consider the ugly sausage making of modern governing, others noted that he had kicked up a hornet’s nest of a debate over whether the White House oversold the legacy-burnishing deal to curb Iran’s nuclear program. The article revived criticism of the agreement. In a statement issued Monday, Sen. John McCain, a longtime critic of the Iran Ben Rhodes pact, said the piece “provided a troubling glimpse of the White House spin machine that has put sustaining ‘the narrative’ above advancing the national interest.” The piece portrays Rhodes, Obama’s top foreign policy speechwriter and arguably one of his most influential aides, as singularly in tune with his boss’s thinking and narrowly focused on crafting a messaging machine to support it. It quotes Rhodes lamenting the ignorance of Washington reporters. (“They literally know nothing.”) And it describes Rhodes, a former aspiring novelist, as focused on crafting a storyline and dismissing facts that don’t fit. Rhodes appears to try to keep secret news that Iran had seized 10 U.S. Navy sailors until after the president’s State of the Union speech. The article quotes Rhodes and his aides describing how they used social media, journalists and friendly interest groups to disseminate White House-generated talking points about the Iran deal. “We created an echo chamber,” Rhodes said. “They were saying things that validated what we had given them to say.”
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NATION | Daily Chronicle / Daily-Chronicle.com
White House in damage control after aide’s remarks