North
Carolina faces Monday deadline on U.S. challenge to bathroom law
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[May 09, 2016]
By Julia Harte
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - North Carolina
officials say they will respond by Monday to the U.S. government's
challenge to a controversial law on public restroom access for
transgender people, but it was unclear if the state would defy
Washington and risk a legal battle.
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In the newest chapter of transgender Americans' fast-evolving
fight for equal rights, the federal government has notified North
Carolina that its law is a civil rights violation. The law, which
went into effect in March, requires transgender people to use public
bathrooms corresponding to the sex on their birth certificate.
If the state does not pull back from implementing the
first-of-its-kind statute, it could face a federal lawsuit,
according to three letters that the U.S. Justice Department sent
last week to North Carolina officials.
The department declined to say whether it would take legal action,
but the letters suggest it is willing to do so, setting the stage
for a potentially costly court fight over an issue that has already
sparked several boycotts against the state.
The letters were "a statement that they clearly are ready to
litigate" on behalf of transgender people in North Carolina, said
Chai Feldblum, a commissioner at the U.S. Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission.
The commission works with the Justice Department to investigate
discrimination charges by public employees.
The president of the University of North Carolina system and a
spokesman for North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory said in response
to inquiries from Reuters that they would respond to the Justice
Department by a Monday deadline that the department set. But the
state officials declined to say how they would reply. The state's
department of public safety, , which also received a letter, did not
respond to requests for comment.
McCrory and other Republican state leaders publicly affirmed their
support for the law after they got the letters last week. They said
the Justice Department's conclusion that the law discriminates
against public employees and university members amounts to
government "overreach."
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If state officials do not abandon the law and the Justice Department
successfully sues for a court order forcing the state to stop
enforcing it, the state would have to comply or face the loss of
federal funding.
North Carolina stands to lose $4.8 billion in federal funding,
mainly educational grants, if it does not back down from the law,
according to an analysis by lawyers at the University of California,
Los Angeles Law School.
The Justice Department and McCrory squared off over the same issue
last year through amicus briefs in a case involving a similar
bathroom rule at Virginia schools. The administration's position was
upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, the same
court that would hear appeals in any future federal case over the
North Carolina law.
The law is already being challenged in federal district court by
critics including the American Civil Liberties Union.
(Additional reporting by Colleen Jenkins in Winston-Salem, NC, and
Julia Edwards in Washington; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Mary
Milliken)
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