Breaking: North Carolina Republicans Fail to Repeal HB2

GOP Lawmakers Unable to Reach Agreement 

In a distinctly embarrassing moment for the North Carolina GOP, at the end of a day marked by more time in recess than in session, Republican lawmakers failed to keep their promise to repeal HB2 in a special session called by Gov. Pat McCrory, which cost taxpayers $42,000. Wednesday’s session was called for the sole purpose of repealing the wide-sweeping, unconstitutional law that targets LGBT people and bans localities from enacting nondiscrimination, employment, minimum wage, and other ordinances while nullifying many existing protections.

Republican Speaker Tim Moore called the House in to session and called many recesses while no one from the House filed a bill to repeal the law. GOP Senate Leader Phil Berger filed a bill to repeal HB2, but it included a poison-pill that banned cities and towns from enacting any LGBT nondiscrimination protections for a six-month “cooling off period,” a “constitutionally questionable” portion of the bill, as one law professor noted.

Here’s how several Republican lawmakers treated the process and Democrats:

Republicans in North Carolina hold a super-majority in both houses, which should make for easy legislative decisions, especially with their current Republican governor.

Democratic Sen. Jeff Jackson:

Charlotte’s city council repealed their nondiscrimination ordinance this week, opening the door for the repeal of HB2. The agreement was once the ordinance was off the books the state legislature would reciprocate by repealing HB2 in full, with no conditions.

That was the only job legislative leaders had to do. Given that HB2 went from draft to bill to signed law in under 12 hours, repealing the law – a far easier and less complicated motion – could have taken no more than one or two hours.

This was the situation just after 5 PM, seven hours into the session:

Sen. Jackson:

Democratic Rep. Pricey Harrison:

Before the session officially ended, Senate Leader Phil Berger was already tweeting a statement blaming Governor-elect Roy Cooper for his failure to repeal a law in his GOP super-majority legislature:

Using the fake attempt to repeal HB2 as a weapon to attack Cooper was probably Berger’s plan all along.