You may remember back in 2016, North Carolina passed a law known as “House Bill 2”, which said that a person must use the bathroom that corresponded with their biological gender on their birth certificate.
Well that generated outrage around the nation and some businesses and sports leagues, like the NCAA, boycotted the state. In 2017, North Carolina backtracked and replaced the law with a new one that only asserted that the state had the power to regulate bathroom access, but it didn’t define that access. This would still prevent cities like Charlotte from creating ordinances allowing transgenders to user whatever bathroom they want.
The ACLU and Lambda Legal sued, and today we have news of a settlement between North Carolina’s Democratic Governor Roy Cooper and the two liberal law firms, via Reuters:
The ACLU and the group Lambda Legal later reached a settlement with North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper, a Democrat, the ACLU said in a statement. It went to [Judge] Schroeder for final approval.
Schroeder, in an eight-page ruling on Tuesday, said the settlement bars state officials from using the legislation “to prevent transgender people from lawfully using public facilities in accordance with their gender identity.”
In other words, the replacement bathroom law can’t be used in the future to prohibit transgenders from using the bathroom of their choice.
Which is why, based on this settlement, transgenders can effectively use whatever bathroom they see fit. The Democratic governor made certain of that.
Reuters reports that the Republican General Assembly has filed papers with the court opposing the settlement.