Feds blast N.C. over trans law

U.S. ATTORNEY General Loretta Lynch said Monday that North Carolina’s controversial bathroom law for transgender people amounts to “state-sponsored discrimination” and is focused on “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.”

The Justice Department last week said the law amounts to illegal sex discrimination and gave North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory until Monday to say he would refuse to enforce it.

Instead, McCrory, a Republican who is up for reelection in November, doubled down, saying the law is needed to protect people from being molested in bathrooms.

McCrory 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.

On Monday, he sued the federal government, arguing that the state law is a “common-sense privacy policy” and that the Justice Department’s position is “baseless and blatant overreach.”

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.