Perhaps trying to get ahead of the curve before the United States Department of Justice could act, prostitute-in-chief to the Christofascists in North Carolina, Gov. Pat McCrory filed a lawsuit against the federal government defending the anti-LGBT law he signed into law in a likely attempt to save his sorry ass from defeat in November by rallying the knuckle dragging, spittle flecked elements of the GOP base. The irony, of course is that McCrory's lawsuit runs directly against the recent 4th Circuit rulin in the Gavin Grim case pending in Virginia. Hence, the rejection of McCrory's lawsuit is almost guaranteed given the binding precedent in the Grimm case. Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Justice filed its own lawsuit this afternoon seeking a court order barring the enforcement of the Christofascists inspired and backed HB2. The Washington Post looks at the federal lawsuit and possible consequences for McCrory and his fellow pandering whores in the North Carolina GOP. Adding to the fun is the likelihood that North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper will refuse to defend against the DOJ Lawsuit. Here are excerpts:
North Carolina and the Justice Department announced on Monday dueling lawsuits over the state’s so-called “bathroom bill,” which has become the epicenter of a larger fight over transgender rights. . . . the Justice Department’s civil rights office said the measure is discriminatory and violates civil rights.
“This action is about a great deal more than just bathrooms,” Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch said during a news conference after the Justice Department’s lawsuit was filed. “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.”
Lynch on Monday linked the bill with a dark legacy that included Jim Crow laws and resistance to the Brown v. Board of Education decision.
“It was not so very long ago that states, including North Carolina, had signs above restrooms, water fountains and on public accommodations keeping people out based upon a distinction without a difference,” said Lynch, who is also a North Carolina native, during her unusually impassioned remarks.
Vanita Gupta, head of the Justice Department’s civil rights division, said Monday that calling the law a “bathroom bill,” as it has become commonly known, “trivializes” the measure’s true impact, which she said could impact state employees, students and sports fans alike. “It speaks to all of us who have ever been made to feel inferior – like somehow we just don’t belong in our community, like somehow we just don’t fit in,” Gupta said. “Let me reassure every transgender individual, right here in America, that you belong just as you are.”
North Carolina receives more than $4 billion in federal education funding each year, much of it in the form of student loans, and the Education Department has said it is reviewing whether to withhold that money due to the bathroom law. The government has withheld funds from schools before over civil rights issues, holding back money from dozens of districts in Southern states that refused to desegregate in the 1960s.
The Justice Department’s lawsuit, in addition to naming the state of North Carolina, also includes the state’s department of public safety, and the University of North Carolina and the school’s board of governors.
North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper (D), who will face McCrory in what is expected to be a close gubernatorial election in November, has said he will not defend the measure. He said Monday that McCrory was “pouring gas on the fire that he lit” by filing a lawsuit against the federal government.
“Instead of doing what’s right for our state, he’s doubling down on what he knows he did wrong,” Cooper said in a video message Monday. “Enough is enough.”
Three groups challenging the bathroom measure in federal court-American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU of North Carolina and Lambda Legal-released a statement saying that McCrory “doubled down on discrimination” against transgender people with his suit Monday. Transgender people work for the state of North Carolina, attend school in North Carolina, and are a part of every community across the state,” the groups said in their statement. “It is unconscionable that the government is placing a target on their backs to advance this discriminatory political agenda. Lawsuits are normally filed to stop discrimination – not to continue it.”
While I hold no ill will toward average citizens of North Carolina, I hope that the Justice Department will play real hard ball with McCrory and the state. If it takes withholding federal funds and causing a financial crisis in North Carolina to get the point across, so be it. Religious based ignorance and bigotry have NO PLACE in the civil laws and North Carolina needs to pay the price of electing Christofascist puppets to both the governorship and the state legislature. As the chaos goes forward, average citizens need to be reminded again and again that the true source of the upheaval is the Christofascists who want to impose their Bronze Age beliefs on all and the sorry political whores in the GOP who are only to happy to serve as their prostitutes. The Christofascists need to become political and social pariahs who are avoided by decent, moral people. As for the "good Christians," I am still waiting to see more of them get off their assess, break their silence and loudly attack their hate-filled fellow believers. If they fail to do so, then they need to be painted with the same anti-modern day Pharisee brush.
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