Turns out police don’t even know how to enforce North Carolina’s trans bathroom bill
(Larry W. Smith/Getty Images)
As legal challenges are mounted on either side of the debate around North Carolina’s anti-LGBT HB2, police have come out to confirm they will not enforce it.
HB2, passed earlier this year and signed by Governor Pat McCrory, bans trans people from using gender-appropriate bathrooms.
It also rolled back local laws protecting LGBT people.
Widely criticised, the law has resulted in the Justice Department filing a lawsuit against North Carolina, and could see the state lose as much as $5 billion in federal education funding.
But a spokesman for Raleigh Police Department has told NPR that the department would not enforce the law.
Damien Graham, a spokesman for the department said “the bill doesn’t speak to enforcement nor penalty.”
He said that because there “wasn’t any specific language that spoke to enforcement or even penalty,” included in the law, police officers would not know how to enforce it.
Other police departments in the state have said that it would be almost impossible for the law to be enforced.
The US Justice Department sued the state of North Carolina on Monday, asking a federal court to rule that the law violates the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
The Department said the state should stop enforcing HB2.
The Attorney General Loretta Lynch also threatened to withhold federal funding to the University of North Carolina system, which could be as much as $4.8 billion.
In response, Governor McCrory filed his own desperate lawsuit against the federal government yesterday.
In it, he named Ms Lynch, the head of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, Vanita Gupta and the Justice Department.
“We’re taking the Obama admin to court,” he wrote.
“They’re bypassing Congress, attempting to rewrite law & policies for the whole country, not just NC.
“Our lawsuit seeks to ensure that NC continues to receive federal funding until the courts clarify federal law & resolve this national issue.”
