Court: Fight can proceed over ‘bathroom bill’ replacement
A lawsuit challenging the replacement for North Carolina’s “bathroom bill” is moving forward, with a judge finding evidence that transgender plaintiffs are being harmed by a prohibition on new local antidiscrimination laws.
Federal Judge Thomas Schroeder, however, rejected another key argument: that uncertainty created by the current law effectively discriminates against transgender people.
The lawsuit was originally filed against the 2016 law HB2, which in many public buildings required transgender people to use restrooms matching their birth certificates. The replacement, passed the following year, rescinded that requirement, but halted new local antidiscrimination ordinances until 2020.
Schroeder sided with plaintiffs’ arguments that the current law, known as HB142, largely thwarts their efforts to seek new LGBT protections.
“While HB142 does not prohibit Plaintiffs’ efforts at advocacy, it plainly makes them meaningless by prohibiting even the prospect of relief at the local level,” the judge wrote in his ruling late Sunday. He said transgender residents had shown evidence of harm from this pre-emption of new local ordinances.
Procedurally, the ruling is a
mixed result for plaintiffs by rejecting one argument and allowing another to move forward.
But one reason the judge rejected their argument about uncertainty over restroom access, the plaintiffs noted Monday, is because he interprets the current law as allowing them to use restrooms matching their gender identity. That’s helpful to transgender people, plaintiffs say, because even under the replacement law, many have feared retribution if they use what others might perceive as the wrong bathroom.
The judge wrote that “nothing” in the provision of HB142 regarding bathroom access “can be construed to prevent transgender individuals from using the restrooms that align with their gender identity.”
A lawyer for the plaintiffs, Chris Brook of the American Civil Liberties Union, issued a statement that the judge’s decision doesn’t account for harm already done under the “bathroom bill” and its replacement, but the ruling allows them to continue fighting in court. Also, he says, the judge’s interpretation of the current law should help transgender people go about their daily lives.
“By making clear that transgender people in North Carolina cannot be barred from using public facilities that match their gender identity, this decision lessens some of the harm that has been caused by these laws,” he said.