Transgender rights:
Justice Department drops lawsuit over North Carolina’s “bathroom bill.”
WASHINGTON — The Justice Department on Friday said it was dismissing a federal lawsuit filed last year against North Carolina over the state’s “bathroom bill,” which required transgender people to use public restrooms corresponding to the sex on their birth certificates.
Officials said that they were abandoning the lawsuit because North Carolina lawmakers last month enacted a law repealing the bathroom bill and replacing it with another measure. The new law, however, has prompted intense criticism from the LGBT groups who are vowing to keep fighting the new measure in court despite the Justice Department’s decision to bow out.
North Carolina’s bathroom bill, also known as House Bill 2, was signed last year and immediately set off a firestorm because of its transgender bathroom provisions and language reversing local ordinances that expanded protections for LGBT people.
The law led to economic boycotts, with companies halting planned expansions in the state and sports behemoths like the National Collegiate Athletic Association and National Basketball Association relocating games to move them out of the state. According to one recent estimate, the bill could cost North Carolina at least $3.7 billion over a 12-year period.
In May 2016, the federal government stepped in, filing a lawsuit that said the bill discriminated against transgender people and violated the federal civil rights statutes.
When then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced the lawsuit, she said it was “about a great deal more than just bathrooms.” Under the Obama administration, officials pushed directives they described as meant to protect transgender students nationwide.
President Donald Trump had criticized Barack Obama’s directives during the campaign, and earlier this year, the Trump administration revoked federal guidelines specifying that transgender students had a right to use the public school bathrooms matching their gender identity. Attorney General Jeff Session was also critical of the Obama administration’s guidance and said authorities should defer to local lawmakers.