Obama’s AG sues North Carolina, likens bathroom privacy law to segregation
The Justice Department filed a
lawsuit today stating that North Carolina has violated federal civil rights
laws by overturning ordinances mandating that transgender people can use the
restroom and shower facilities of the opposite biological sex.
Attorney General Loretta Lynch
announced the federal case at a press conference late this afternoon, likening
laws that bar biological males from using female showers to Jim Crow laws and
segregation measures that forced blacks to use separate drinking fountains.
“This is not the first time we
have seen discriminatory responses to historic moments of progress to our
nation,” said Lynch in a press conference scheduled for 3:30, which began half
an hour late. “We saw it in the Jim Crow laws that followed the Emancipation
Proclamation. We saw it in the fierce arguments against Brown
v. the Board of Education” - the 1954 Supreme Court decision that
overturned segregation. “And we saw it in the state bans on same-sex unions
that were intended to spike any hope that one day gays and lesbians might be
afforded the right to marry.”
“It was not so very long ago that
states, including North Carolina, had signs above restaurants, water fountains,
and public accommodations, keeping people out,” she said.
“This is about a great deal more
than bathrooms,” Lynch continued. “It's about the Founding ideals that have led
this country, haltingly but inexorably, in the direction of fairness,
inclusion, and equality for all Americans.”
Addressing “the transgender
community” directly, Lynch, a North Carolina native, said, “Please know that
history is on your side.” God isn't plus the rest of the nation isn't.
Vanita Gupta, head of the Justice
Department's civil rights division, agreed the lawsuit is about principles of
the highest order.
“I want to make one thing clear,”
Gupta said. “Calling H.B. 2 a 'bathroom bill' trivializes what this is all
about.”
It was Gupta who wrote the letter
to North Carolina officials last Wednesday saying that the state must agree not to enforce the Public Facilities Privacy and
Security Act (H.B. 2) or risk today's retribution.
Aside from the federal civil
rights lawsuit filed today, the Departments of Education, Transportation, and
Housing and Urban Development (HUD) threatened late last week to withhold funds
totaling at least $3 billion if the state did not comply with the Obama
administration's will by this afternoon.
"The federal government is
threatening North Carolina for lawfully enacting common-sense legislation that
simply protects people’s privacy and respects the right of private businesses
to set their own policies,” said Alliance
Defending Freedom Legal
Counsel Kellie Fiedore. The ADF has filed suit on behalf of families in
Palatine, Illinois, after the school district yielded to the Obama
administration's pressure to change its restroom and locker room policies.
“The administration’s lawless
attack on H.B. 2, and its threat to economically harm the state by withholding
millions of federal dollars, is the latest attempt to coerce conformity with
the administration’s political agenda,” she said.
The DOJ states H.B. 2 violates the
Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the 1972 Title IX law,
both of which make discrimination on the basis of “sex” a federal offense.
Gupta also invoked the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA).
But lawmakers had no intention of
applying the groundbreaking civil rights law – promoted by Martin Luther King
Jr. and signed by President Lyndon Johnson after John F. Kennedy's
assassination – to transgender people, who hardly entered the national
consciousness more than five decades ago.
“Martin Luther King Jr. didn't
march on Selma so that grown men and boys could march into girls changing
rooms,” said Traditional
Values Coalition President
Andrea Lafferty. “No legislature passed this interpretation, no executive
signed this into law. The Obama administration is interpreting this law by
regulatory fiat.”
King's niece, Alveda King, wrote
in her book King Rules that, if he were alive today,Martin Luther King Jr. would fight to preserve marriage as the exclusive union of one man and
one woman.
The Justice Department's lawsuit
came just hours after Governor Pat McCrory sued the Justice Department in another federal district court in
the state, seeking that all federal discrimination charges be dropped and the
Obama administration pay the costs the state incurred in responding to the
threat.
Leaders nationwide praised Gov.
McCrory, a moderate Republican and former mayor of Charlotte, for
holding the line on restroom privacy against massive pressure from government
and corporate titans alike.
“Gov. McCrory is to be commended
for standing up for the people he represents and refusing to put a price tag on
the privacy and safety of women and girls. All Americans should be thankful
that we still have strong leaders like Gov. McCrory who don’t surrender to
intimidation by politicians and bureaucrats in Washington,” said Fiedore.
He won't fight alone, Lafferty
added.
“I can assure you, so long as
there are Christians drawing breath in America, we will not be silent, and we
will push back,” she said.
