LGBT Legal and Civil Rights Groups Ask Dept. Of Justice and White House to Pressure North Carolina Over HB2
The U.S. Department of Justice says it is “reviewing” a letter sent by five top LGBT civil rights and legal organizations that urges the federal government to remind North Carolina it could lose billions in federal education funding if the anti-LGBT law HB2 is not repealed.
The letter, sent to Attorney General Loretta Lynch and to the White House Counsel, requests they “make definitively clear that wholesale requirements of sex discrimination like HB 2 will put federal funding at risk.”
The groups behind the missive are The American Civil Liberties Union, GLBT Legal Advocates & Defenders, Lambda Legal, National Center for Lesbian Rights, and the Transgender Law Center.
Dominic Holden at Buzzfeed, first to report the groups’ letter, notes a “Justice Department spokesperson told BuzzFeed News, ‘The department has received and is reviewing the letter.'”
Buzzfeed adds, the “Department of Education said in an early April statement to BuzzFeed News that it is ‘reviewing North Carolina’s new law to determine any potential impact on the state’s federal education funding.’ However, a month after the governor signed it into law, administration officials have not announced the results of their review.”
$4.5 billion in federal funding for education is at risk as long as HB2 remains law. The groups want the federal government to warn North Carolina they could lose those funds if they do not act quickly to repeal HB2.
“The prospect of the loss of federal funding helped convince South Dakota Governor Daugaard to veto a similar bill, and the Tennessee legislature to drop one as well,” the letter, posted by Buzzfeed, reads. “But in North Carolina, HB2 is already law, and greater guidance from the administration about the potential loss of funding is needed.”
“HB 2 and copycat bills in other states present a violation of federal law that is unprecedented in its clarity and sweep; the North Carolina law mandates, on a systemic and across-the-board basis, sex discrimination by schools and government buildings.”
The groups insist “the federal government must respond in a manner that is proportionate to the scope and nature of the violations. The violations of federal law that are mandated by HB 2 and similar proposals require the federal government to make clear that states that go down this discriminatory road run a real risk of losing significant federal funding.”
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Image by United States Mission Geneva via Flickr and a CC license
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