Transgender North Carolinians get restroom-access win

A federal judge ruled Friday that the University of North Carolina system can not enforce the part of the state’s House Bill 2 law that deals with which restrooms transgender people use, a controversial provision that prompted the Justice Department to sue the state.

US District Court Judge Thomas Schroeder said three plaintiffs challenging the measure had a strong chance of proving that the state’s toilet-access measure violated federal law, and temporarily blocked the university from applying the state law.

The judge also seems to poke holes in the law itself, saying laws against “indecent exposure, peeping and trespass” already get at the issues of privacy and safety HB2 claims to target.

For now, the decision is a victory for three transgender students in the UNC school system who are part of the case, as well as advocates of the LGBT community.

“Today, the tightness that I have felt in my chest every day. has eased”.

School employee Joaquin Carcano welcomed the ruling and said that he will not rest until the law is defeated.

File picture shows a man holding up a sign supporting North Carolina’s anti-transgender bathroom law following Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’ campaign rally in Charlotte, North Carolina, August 18, 2016.

Lawmakers in several other U.S. states have proposed similar legislation – sometimes referred to as “bathroom bills”.

“Our clients are one step closer to being free from the discrimination that this harmful law imposes on them”, ACLU of North Carolina Legal Director Chris Brook added.

“We’re talking billions and billions of dollars at stake here”, says Andrew Brod, an economist at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro.

-Hunter Schafer, a transgender girl at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts High School in Winston-Salem. The appeals court cited Title IX, the federal law that prohibits sex discrimination in educational environments, and highlighted the U.S. Department of Education’s interpretation that Title IX covers gender identity.

Court documents of the ruling explain that HB2 requires “public agencies to ensure that multiple occupancy bathrooms, showers, and other similar facilities are “designated for and only used by” persons based on their ‘biological sex, ‘ defined as the sex listed on their birth certificate”.

UNC law professor Maxine Eichner said she was struck by the fact that the judge – who was appointed by Republican President George W. Bush – carefully weighed the plaintiffs’ hardships in the more than 80-page ruling.

Several cases seeking to challenge or defend the law were assigned to Schroeder, while another case is pending in a separate federal court.

But the US Supreme Court voted in August to stay the order, which would have allowed a transgender boy to use the boys’ restroom at his Virginia high school, until the high court considers the subject more fully.

“The judge took real care in looking at the facts”, she said.