Opportunities Lost
Published April 1, 2016
Editorial by Greensboro News-Record, April 1, 2016.
As governor and attorney general, Pat McCrory and Roy Cooper should work together. Instead, they’re adversaries in a legal, political and cultural battle over controversial legislation enacted last week.
“We should not even be here today,” Cooper, the attorney general and Democratic candidate for governor, said Tuesday in announcing his office won’t defend House Bill 2 in federal court.
A lawsuit against the measure was filed Monday. Plaintiffs contend it denies equal protection rights for gays, lesbians, transgender people and others. Cooper agrees.
McCrory, a Republican running for re-election, fiercely criticized Cooper later that day in a video. He said Cooper “refused to fulfill his oath of office to defend the people of North Carolina in a lawsuit filed over the privacy of our restrooms. As the state’s attorney, he can’t select which laws he will defend and which laws are politically expedient to refuse to defend.”
“I am following my oath of office,” Cooper said in a phone interview Thursday. He’s defending nondiscrimination policies adopted by his own office and the Department of State Treasurer, he said. Those policies protect employees from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and marital status, which the new law doesn’t. The law supersedes policies of all subdivisions of state government, including his office, violating the doctrine of separation of powers, according to Cooper.
The treasurer, Democrat Janet Cowell, asked the Attorney General’s Office to defend her department’s policy. The two offices are consulting to determine whether to initiate legal action against the law, Cooper added.
“His excuse that his own internal policies would be affected is wrong,” McCrory said Tuesday of Cooper. “All employment policies for cities and corporations and the attorney general’s own policies remain the same. The attorney general is inventing conflict that simply doesn’t exist.”
“I would rather this issue not even be here,” Cooper answered. “There was no reason for this legislation to be introduced in this way and in its breadth and scope.” He said its effects aren’t clear but a solution is: “All of this can go away if this is repealed.”
In better circumstances — if the governor and attorney general weren’t political foes — the trouble might have been avoided. McCrory would have called Cooper, “the state’s attorney,” and asked his opinion of the legislation — especially if he wanted Cooper to defend it.
He didn’t call. Cooper said he didn’t see HB 2 until late morning on March 23, after it had been introduced. In less than 12 hours, it was passed and signed into law by the governor.
Cooper didn’t call McCrory, either, to register objections. Cooper said he thought the best way to do that was to issue a “strong public statement.” It might have been better to try to talk sense to the governor privately.
Ultimately, though, the blame is McCrory’s. He should have left his pen on his desk and invited more input on HB 2. Instead, he signed and generated a hurricane-force blowback. And he expects the attorney general to defend the ill-considered measure? It’s not going to happen.
