By Bronte Price, PoliticKING
North Carolina’s top officials on Monday sued the U.S. Justice Department, Attorney General Loretta Lynch and one of her assistants, after the federal government said that North Carolina’s so-called bathroom bill, or HB2, is a constitutional violation. North Carolina, however, calls it a "common sense bodily privacy law." The lawsuit comes after last week's federal demand that North Carolina "remedy" its Public Facilities Privacy and Security Act by Monday or face consequences. The lawsuit calls these demands "a baseless and blatant overreach."
The bathroom bill bans individuals from using public bathrooms that do not correspond with their biological sex, according to their birth certificates.
Gov. Pat McCrory paints bathroom bill as a privacy issue.https://t.co/rsHgTTy05I
— Mashable News (@MashableNews) May 9, 2016
The Justice Department asserted in its letter last week to Gov. Pat McCrory that, "Access to sex-segregated restrooms and other workplace facilities consistent with gender identity is a term, condition or privilege of employment. Denying such access to transgender individuals, whose gender identity is different from their gender assigned at birth, while affording it to similarly situated non-transgender employees, violates Title VII."
The North Carolina's lawsuit, which was filed by McCrory and state Department of Public Safety Secretary Frank Perry, calls the Justice Department's position a "radical reinterpretation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act."
Speaking to Fox News Sunday, McCrory spoke out against the DOJ's warning, calling the federal government "a bully".
"They are trying to define gender identity, and there is no clear identification or definition of gender identity," McCrory told host Chris Wallace.
He added that the HB2 only pertains only to government offices, universities and road-side rest stops, and does not affect private businesses. McCrory also said that he doesn’t have the legal authority to change laws and that the expectation that he can is “unrealistic.”
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