ATLANTA — Gov. Pat McCrory of North Carolina is
expected to respond on Monday to the Justice Department’s warning that a new state
law limiting the rights of transgender people is illegal, after he and the
federal government failed to reach an agreement that would have allowed him to
postpone his reply.
Mr. McCrory said that he could not assent to the
Justice Department’s condition for a one-week extension — an acknowledgment by
him that the law is discriminatory — and would answer by 5 p.m. on Monday.
“I’m not going to publicly announce that something
discriminates, which is agreeing with their letter, because we’re really
talking about a letter in which they’re trying to define gender identity, and
there is no clear definition of gender identity,” Mr. McCrory, a Republican who
is seeking re-election this year, said on “Fox News Sunday.” “It’s the federal
government being a bully.”
The governor said that he was “discussing all of our
legal options, all of our political options,” and he appeared to rule out the
possibility that he would take some kind of independent action to undo the law,
or at least limit its enforcement, as some people have suggested.
A spokeswoman for the Justice Department, Dena
Iverson, said on Sunday that there were “ongoing” discussions after officials
“received requests from multiple parties for an extension of the deadline in
our May 6 letters,” which were signed by the department’s top civil rights
lawyer, Vanita Gupta.
In her letter to Mr. McCrory, Ms. Gupta said the
Justice Department had concluded that the law, which bars people from using
public restrooms that do not correspond with the gender listed on their birth
certificates, breached the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Mr. McCrory signed the
measure, commonly referred
to as House Bill 2, into law on March 23, hours after the General Assembly
approved it during a one-day special session.
Businesses and gay rights groups have criticized the
measure and demanded its full repeal, and the bathroom provision has emerged as
a particular concern to officials in Washington, who have said that the federal
government might someday seek to withhold billions of dollars in aid to North
Carolina.
Ms. Gupta did not make
such an explicit threat in her letter to Mr. McCrory, in which she said the
state was “engaged in a pattern or practice of discrimination against its
employees.” She gave the governor until Monday to notify the Justice Department
whether he would “remedy these violations of Title VII,” which prohibits sex
discrimination, and noted that the government could “apply to the appropriate
court for an order that will ensure compliance with Title VII.”
Ms. Gupta sent a similar letter to the University of North Carolina, which must also respond by Monday.
Mr. McCrory’s bid for additional time is an extension
of the argument that Republican leaders in North Carolina have been making for
days: that the Justice Department imposed an excessively hasty deadline to
determine the future of a law they contend is crucial to public safety and
privacy.
The federal government, Mr. McCrory said, had given
North Carolina just “three working days to respond to a pretty complex letter
and to a pretty big threat” and that state officials “don’t think three working
days is enough to respond to such a threat.”
A spokesman for Roy Cooper, the Democratic candidate
for governor and the state’s attorney general, criticized Mr. McCrory’s stand.
“Governor McCrory signed HB2 into law in the dark of
night after passing it in just 12 hours, and now complains when he’s given five
days to defend it,” the spokesman, Ford Porter, said in a statement. “The
governor needs to undo this law now and stop playing politics with our
economy.”
Mr. Cooper has refused to defend the law in federal
court.
Although the General Assembly will reconvene before
Mr. McCrory must submit his reply on Monday, there is virtually no chance that
lawmakers will change the law by 5 p.m. The speaker of the State House of
Representatives, Tim Moore, said last week that the deadline
would “come and go” without action by the Republican-controlled legislature.
“I think we all as legislators have a duty to make
sure that we analyze everything, that we look to see what our legal arguments
are to counter what the Obama administration is trying to do and see what other
things can be done,” Mr. Moore said.
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