LGBTQ Rights and Civil Rights Activist are crying foul over a bill that some had hoped would completely reverse the HB2 legislation passed by former Governor Pat McCrory last March. When HB2 passed it was initially estimated that North Carolina would lose around $510 billion due to the bill. According to Politifact, even after the bill passed, CNBC rated North Carolina the fifth-best state for business in the country last year.
The NCAA has stated it would not let the Tarheel state host college championship games through 2022 unless changes to the law were made on Thursday. By all appearances, this is a repeal in name only, with many of it’s most restrictive tenets remaining in place for three years. Will this be enough?
It is unimaginable to think the state of North Carolina would not host an NCAA college championship game of any kind. But it was also unimaginable that the HB2 law passed in the first place. Newly-minted Democratic Governor Roy Cooper campaigned on fully repealing the HB2 bill.
(Originally Published in the Charlotte Observer)
The so-called “Bathroom Bill” cleared state legislature Thursday, but LGBTQ advocates called the bill a backstabbing betrayal. It passed the House 70-48 after the North Carolina state Senate passed the bill by a vote of 32-16 after a compromise between the Cooper and Republican lawmakers was struck.
LGBTQ and civil rights advocates have called for a full repeal of the bill, and denounced the new compromise over provisions they say will still allow for discrimination, namely a three-year ban on local nondiscrimination ordinances.
Among the other compromises that would result in the continuation of discriminatory practices are, leaving state legislators in charge of policy over multi-stall bathrooms, and putting a temporary halt on local governments passing nondiscrimination ordinances until 2020. The American Civil Liberties Union and Lambda Legal both denounced the compromise.
