Raleigh News & Observer Editorial Board calls to "Roll back HB 2"

[mnhtnbb]

One of the stranger twists in the uproar over North Carolina’s House Bill 2 is that its Republican backers keep defending it as a “common sense” law. In truth, the so-called “bathroom bill” has to rank among the state’s weirdest pieces of legislation.

The law addresses a problem that doesn’t exist – men claiming to be transgender women so they can peep and prey in women’s bathrooms – but it’s created a real problem that its backers refuse to see – damage to the state’s image and economy.

<snip>

Meanwhile, the economic fallout mounts. New York City, Seattle, San Francisco and West Palm Beach banned their employees from non-essential travel to North Carolina in response to the law. The Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) civil rights organization, and Equality NC, released a letter from more than 80 CEOs and business leaders calling for the law’s repeal. The High Point Furniture show, the largest of its kind, announced customers were pulling out of the April 16 event.

The bill was conceived as an election-year wedge issue that Republicans thought would rally their base and put Cooper on the defensive. Instead it has embarrassed thoughtful Republicans and set back the economic development that Republican leaders say is their top priority. McCrory, Berger and House Speaker Tim Moore should admit HB2 missed its mark and is causing far more problems than it solves. They should agree to revise or repeal the law as the first order of business when the legislature convenes April 25. That would be the common sense response to this legislative nonsense.

http://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/editorials/article68888687.html#navlink=CustList


AND on the facing page a Point of View Piece entitled "Law 'facially' unconstitutional' written by a Constitutional Law professor at one of the state's private law schools.

In 1992, Colorado adopted a statewide solution to what it viewed as a local problem: Cities, towns and counties were amending their discrimination ordinances to protect homosexuals and other LGBT residents within their borders. Colorado voters responded by approving an initiative that amended the Colorado Constitution to deprive any political subdivision of the power to use its law to protect gays, lesbians and bisexuals.

The U.S. Supreme Court, in a decision called Romer v. Evans, found that Colorado’s constitutional amendment violated the rights of gay Coloradans under the U.S. Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause. The amendment, stated the court, deprived one “politically unpopular group” – gays and lesbians in Colorado – from exercising their rights to persuade their local governments for the protections that other groups in those cities already enjoyed. There was no explanation for such a deprivation of rights, said the court, other than “animosity toward the class of persons affected.”

The Romer decision celebrates its 20th birthday this May, but so far as the majority of the North Carolina legislature and Gov. Pat McCrory are concerned, it is as if the decision had never been reached at all. Just as Colorado did more than two decades ago, North Carolina lawmakers have taken away what Charlotte saw fit to give: equal rights under the law to all of its residents. And because no other city or town can now do what Charlotte tried to do, now no gay or transgendered person, or any advocate for that person, can make the case to his or her town council or county commission that what the law should view as right can change.

<snip>

HB2 was written by the legislature and signed by the governor, in an “emergency session,” in response to one thing: a law passed in Charlotte that protected LGBT people in that city from discrimination in public housing and employment. McCrory can defend his signing of the law by talking about privacy in locker rooms as much as he likes; HB2 is a direct and unmistakable legislative response to Charlotte’s expansion of existing rights to gay, lesbian and transgendered people in that city. When the government deprives one group of people of rights that others enjoy – here, the right to lobby local lawmakers for legal protection from discrimination – the government violates the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause.

http://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/op-ed/article68868977.html#navlink=Lead


I'm sure McCrory thought he was creating a wedge issue that would put Roy Cooper on the defensive for the November election. Instead, it looks more like he's handed Cooper
the keys to the Governor's Mansion.

I can't wait to vote for Cooper in November. And today I'm sending his campaign a check.

[octoberlib]

1. Yep. I donated yesterday.

This has to be the best response yet:

The Hollywood Reporter asked Rob Reiner to respond to [NC Lt. Gov] Forest's assertion that he does not understand the law that he objects to and the filmmaker responded with the following statement: "This law is so discriminatory that Dow Chemical and I are on the same side. That ought to tell you something about how unjust it is."

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/north-carolina-lawmaker-hollywood-boycott-878448

[mnhtnbb]

3. What a great line. Classic.

[gratuitous]

2. Poorly written, hastily passed

While I'm quite sure that many of our overlords are properly concerned about the hit to North Carolina's economy this piece of legislative offal will produce, can we also be sure to acknowledge the very real danger it poses to living, breathing human beings? I realize that money is of the highest importance in our political realm, but let's not forget the citizens who are going to take a physical hit in following this law.

[mnhtnbb]

4. True.

What the editorial is saying, is that more people in the State find themselves on the same side of the issue--for whatever reason--
and that is going to make the difference come November.

[11 Bravo]

5. This old UNC grad hasn't lived in North Carolina since the 70's, but ...

I'll be sending a check to the Cooper campaign.
(Go HEELS! Beat Syracuse!)

[mnhtnbb]

6. Yay!

Go Heels!