On Friday, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction against the "bathroom bill" section of North Carolina's infamous HB2 law, which prevents transgender people from using the bathroom in accordance to their gender identity. Today's ruling says that the University of North Carolina cannot enforce the "bathroom bill" sections of the law. The injunction was brought on as part of a legal challenge to the entirety of the law by a group of people represented by the ACLU.
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." The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit on behalf of plaintiffs in the case Joaquín Carcaño and UNC School of the Arts high school student Hunter Schafer. The Department of Justice has also filed a lawsuit.
U.S. District Judge Thomas Schroeder ruled, "UNC may not apply HB2's one-size-fits-all approach to what must be a case-by-case inquiry."
Lambda Legal, a civil rights organization involved in the case, released a press release after the ruling in which Carcaño said, "Today is a great day for me and hopefully this is the start to chipping away at the injustice of H.B. 2 that is harming thousands of other transgender people who call North Carolina home. Today, the tightness that I have felt in my chest every day since H.B. 2 passed has eased. But the fight is not over: we won't rest until this discriminatory law is defeated."
The Justice Department has said that HB2 violates Title IX of the U.S. Civil Rights Act, which ensures no person can be discriminated by their sex in education programs. It states, "No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance."
Although Barack Obama and the White House gave a directive to public schools to allow students the use of the bathroom that matches their gender identity, a Texas judge blocked the directive this week. That district judge signed an injunction for 12 states including Texas, which filed a lawsuit over the directive.
You can read today's full ruling on HB2 here.
