Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
The U.S. Justice Department filed a federal lawsuit Monday against the state of North Carolina after the state failed to either repeal or remedy its law requiring transgender people to use public bathrooms that match the gender on their birth certificates. According to the suit, the law “constitutes a pattern or practice of employment discrimination on the basis of sex in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964... discrimination on the basis of sex in an education program receiving federal funds in violation of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972... and discrimination on the basis of sex and gender identity in programs receiving federal funds in violation of the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2013.”
“This is not the first time that we have seen discriminatory responses to historic moments of progress for our nation,” Attorney General Loretta Lynch said Monday. “We saw it in the Jim Crow laws that followed the Emancipation Proclamation; we saw it in the fierce and widespread resistance to Brown v. Board of Education; and we saw it in the proliferation of state bans on same-sex unions that were intended to stifle any hope that gay and lesbian Americans might one day be afforded the right to marry.”
—Andrew Kirell