Lack of enforcement plan shows HB2 is a costly farce
Published April 14, 2016
Editorial by Winston-Salem Journal, April 13, 2016.
House Bill 2, the “bathroom bill” rushed through by the state legislature and Gov. Pat McCrory, is having the desired effect of rallying the troops before the November election even as it drains economic-development efforts. McCrory started trying to walk the measure back Tuesday with an executive order that does too little too late.
HB2 has cost the state millions of dollars from boycotts, and the costs will likely keep rising unless the legislature repeals the law. The “Carolina Comeback” is seeming more and more like a Custer’s Last Stand, economic style.
The governor’s order, while expanding some legal protections for state workers based on sexual orientation and gender identity, leaves intact the law’s bathroom provision. The GOP leaders must know there’s no widespread public-safety threat from transgender people in public restrooms, since they have no firm enforcement plan for their new law. HB2 presents no clear plan to spot offenders, detain them or punish them. The emperor has no clothes.
What is all too real is the economic damage caused by depicting transgender people, our neighbors, as some sort of public enemies. Our city, just as the rest of the state, has worked too hard on our economy and our equality to be dragged back to the dark ages by the GOP leaders pushing this new law that requires people to use the public restroom that corresponds to their birth gender.
HB2 supporters conjure up scary images of burly men sauntering into women’s restrooms. Opponents point to the costs and the failure of the legislature to protect a group of North Carolinians that is more likely to suffer bullying and discrimination than almost any other, transgender people.
And the lack of a clear enforcement plan shows that this was simply Machiavellian politics from the start.
UNC system President Margaret Spellings said the UNC system would follow the law. But she realizes there’s no way to confirm that transgender people are using only public bathrooms matching their biological sex. The university does not plan to enforce bathroom use, she told reporters last week.
If the governor and the legislature had concrete evidence of widespread abuse by transgender people in bathrooms, surely they would have included a firm enforcement plan.
In the meantime, the law allows discrimination by preventing North Carolina citizens from suing for discrimination in state courts. McCrory, in his order, indicated he would seek legislation that would restore that right. Don’t hold your breath waiting for the legislature to do that.
The law also prevents local communities from controlling their own economies by blocking local discrimination standards and minimum-wage practices with contractors. Nobody is rallying to support that. In the long run, those provisions could do a lot more harm than allowing transgender people to use the restrooms they choose.
This kind of hot-button tactic has been used in our state and elsewhere before, particularly during the civil-rights era: Raise a boogeyman claim of some dire result of social change, portraying fair treatment of a minority as somehow threatening the majority. Politicians will keep using it as long as the public responds.
In the meantime, the costs in North Carolina, in terms of dollars and profile, have been rising. If they have any real concern for our state’s well-being, at least its economic well-being, the legislature and McCrory would rescind HB2 now. The support it’s raised will dwindle as our state keeps losing business — and dwindling on the national map.
