Raleigh
House Speaker Tim Moore said Thursday that legislators won’t meet the U.S. Department of Justice’s Monday deadline to repeal or stop enforcing the law.
The department sent state leaders a letter Wednesday saying that the law violates the U.S. Civil Rights Act and Title IX, a finding that could jeopardize billions in federal education funding. Those laws ban discrimination in education based on sex and employment discrimination.
The department takes issue with the law’s provision requiring transgender people to use the bathroom that corresponds to the gender on their birth certificate. The bathroom rule applies to state government facilities, public universities and schools, while private businesses are allowed to set their own policies.
“We will take no action by Monday,” Moore told reporters on Thursday. “That deadline will come and go. We don’t ever want to lose any money, but we’re not going to get bullied by the Obama administration to take action prior to Monday’s date. That’s not how this works.”
Moore said state leaders still are trying to determine their next steps.
“Right now we’re talking with our attorneys to see what our options are,” he said. “We’re going to move at the speed that we’re going to move at to look at what our options are.”
White House press secretary Josh Earnest distanced Obama from the order in his press briefing Thursday afternoon.
“These kinds of enforcement actions are made independent of any sort of political interference or direction from the White House,” Earnest said. “Those are decisions that are made entirely by attorneys at the Department of Justice.”
Democrats in the legislature said the Department of Justice order gives lawmakers plenty of time and should be addressed now.
“HB2 became law in less than 12 hours,” tweeted state Rep. Cecil Brockman, a Democrat. “Five days should be more than enough time to decide how to clean up after it.”
A spokesman for Republican Gov. Pat McCrory said via text message that the governor plans to have a response to the Department of Justice order by Monday’s deadline. He did not offer further details about the response.
Senate leader Phil Berger was less clear on what might happen, or won’t happen, before Monday.
“Obviously there’ll have to be some response — you’ve got the deadline — but I don’t see the legislature, as the legislature, taking any specific response,” he said Thursday morning.
An executive order issued by McCrory addressed some of the impacts of the law on state employees. McCrory expanded nondiscrimination protections for all state employees to include sexual orientation and gender identity. And he ordered Cabinet agencies to make “reasonable accommodations” for employees and visitors who request single-occupancy restrooms, locker rooms and showers.
Moore said that despite the deadline, North Carolina won’t risk an immediate loss of federal education funding if it doesn’t comply. During the current school year, state public schools received $861 million. In 2014-15, the University of North Carolina system got $1.4 billion.