North Carolina Repeals Infamous HB2 “Bathroom Bill”

An April 2016 protest of HB2 in Asheville, North Carolina.
Photo: J. Bicking / Shutterstock.com

North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper and the state’s two top Republican lawmakers announced on March 29 that they had reached a deal with the governor for a law that repeals the infamous HB2, also known as the “Bathroom Bill.”

The original law, which forbade transgender people from using restrooms at government facilities that matched their gender and prevented local governments from passing their own non-discrimination ordinances, drew massive criticism from human rights groups and corporations. Businesses, entertainers, and sports leagues boycotted the state, and job expansion plans were called off by several companies opposed to the bill on grounds that it would be unsafe for their employees because it enshrined discrimination into law.

The 2017 NBA All-Star Game was moved from Charlotte to New Orleans because of HB2. The NCAA also moved several college athletic championships out of the state. But the problem that finally drove legislators to work on some sort of repeal was that the NCAA had said it wouldn’t consider North Carolina’s 131 bids for NCAA championship venues unless the state repeals HB2.

Since the NCAA is going to start deciding this week about where to host championship events for the next four years, North Carolina legislators faced even more pressure to work on a repeal effort.

“I support the House Bill 2 repeal compromise,” said Gov. Roy Cooper. “It’s not a perfect deal, but it repeals House Bill 2 and begins to repair our reputation.”

“Compromise requires give and take from all sides, and we are pleased this proposal fully protects bathroom safety and privacy,” said Senate Leader Phil Berger and House Speaker Tim Moore in a joint statement of the repeal bill, now called HB142.

LGBT groups are less enamored of the repeal deal.

It’s “a repeal in name only,” they said. Chris Sgro, executive director of Equality NC, said the agreement was a “shell piece of legislation” on which LGBTQ groups had not been consulted.

Although the bill repeals key provisions of HB2, there’s still plenty of objectionable content, including that it keeps bathroom regulations in the legislature’s hands and places a moratorium on local non-discrimination ordinances until December 2020 to “allow federal litigation to play out,” said Berger.

“The initiative is not a repeal,” Sgro told CNN. “It’s doubling down on the discrimination that HB2 exacts—it’s HB2.0. It doesn’t allow municipalities to protect people from discrimination ‘til 2020. It doesn’t do anything to better the lives of LGBT North Carolinians.” The Human Rights Campaign was even more forceful. It tweeted “Any NC maker who supports this bad #HB2 ‘deal’ is no ally of LGBTQ people & will have planted themselves on the wrong side of history.”

Maria Keisling, the executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, was also disappointed in the compromise bill. She posted on Facebook, “The NC legislature and Gov Cooper have announced they have struck a backroom deal to NOT repeal HB2, but rather to eliminate parts of it, but enshrined other parts of it for the foreseeable future…NC will become one of only a few states where protecting people’s rights is illegal.”

HB142 went before the North Carolina legislature on March 30. It passed the Senate and the House and was signed into law by Governor Cooper.