Among those lodging the complaint are a 20-year-old student at UNC-Greensboro, an associate dean at the North Carolina Central University School of Law, the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina and Joaquín Carcaño, an employee of the UNC-Chapel Hill Behavior and Technology Lab. The Equality NC Foundation was originally a plaintiff on the lawsuit, but withdrew to focus on their TurnOUT! NC projects and educational work.
“We’re still in support of the lawsuit and of ACLU North Carolina and of Lambda Legal and all of the work they do,” said Ben Graumann, Director of Communications for Equality NC. “We had our lobby day today here at the North Carolina General Assembly and we had lots of folks coming out. It’s been over two months now that we’ve been fighting HB2 and people are still interested and people are still fighting against it.”
The preliminary injunction, if approved, will prevent state officials from implementing House Bill 2 until both the NC lawsuit against the Department of Justice and countersuit against Governor Pat McCrory and other top state and UNC-system officials are settled.
This proposed injunction comes in response to these conflicting lawsuits, which will determine the constitutionality of NC’s House Bill 2. According to the complaint, “Plaintiffs seek a declaratory judgment that HB2 violates their or their members’ constitutional and statutory rights to equal protection, liberty, dignity, autonomy and privacy, as well an injunction preliminarily and permanently enjoining enforcement by of HB2 by Defendants.”
The enforcement of House Bill 2, initially passed March 23, has been controversial, as critics of the bill feel it is legalizing trans-antagonism. Since passage of the bill, the governors of New York, Washington, Minnesota and Vermont have banned nonessential travel to North Carolina and businesses like PayPal have withdrawn expansion plans for branches in the state.
At a press conference in Raleigh on Monday, Chris Brook, legal director for ACLU North Carolina, said, “We are asking the court to overturn House Bill 2 because it is unconstitutional, because it violates the protection and due process clauses of the 14th Amendment, because it discriminates on the basis of the sex and sexual orientation and because it is an invasion of privacy for transgender men and women.”
“We don’t want this fight to be necessary, but legislation such as this and injustice such as this demands that we take action,” said Carcaño at the press conference in Raleigh on Monday. “It’s so much more than a restroom. It’s about dignity. It’s about respect.”
