RALEIGH, N.C. (Legal Newsline) — U. S. Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch has announced the Justice Department has filed a complaint against the state of North Carolina, the University of North Carolina (UNC) and the North Carolina Department of Public Safety (DPS), alleging the defendants are discriminating against transgender individuals.
The state recently passed House Bill 2 (H.B. 2), which requires public agencies to treat transgender individuals differently than how they would treat non-transgender individuals. The Justice Department believes this violates Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 and the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2013 (VAWA).
“This action is about a great deal more than just bathrooms,” Lynch said. “This is about the dignity and respect we accord our fellow citizens, and the laws that we as a people and as a country have enacted to protect them–indeed, to protect all of us. 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. This is not a time to act out of fear. This is a time to summon our national virtues of inclusivity, diversity, compassion and open-mindedness. What we must not do–what we must never do–is turn on our neighbors, our family members, our fellow Americans, for something they cannot control, and deny what makes them human.”
