North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory issued this angry statement in response to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals denial to rehear a case regarding transgender rights decided in April.
“School systems throughout our nation should be allowed to make sensible accommodations for students whose gender identity conflicts with their own physical anatomy. Yet the extreme Obama courts and administration deny this common sense flexibility at the expense of privacy for millions of boys and girls in our schools’ restrooms, locker room and shower facilities.
“It’s unfortunate that our attorney general Roy Cooper didn’t join us to pretect the expectation of privacy for our children.
“As Judge Niemeyer notes in his opinion, ‘…they can override these provisions by redefining sex to mean how any given person identifies himself or her self at any given time, thereby, of necessity, denying all affected persons the dignity and freedom of bodily privacy.’
“He went on to say, and I agree, ‘…the momentous nature of this issue deserves an open road to the Supreme Court to seek the Court’s controlling construction of Title IX for national application.’
“Alternatively, the U.S. Congress could take action to clarify the scope of federal anti-discrimination laws so there is consistent application across our country.”
The original case was brought by a transgender student, Gavin Grimm, against the Gloucester County School Board in Virginia, which enacted a policy restricting students to restrooms aligned with their “biological gender.,” and not their gender identity.
Grimm said in a statement, “Now that the Fourth Circuit’s decision is final, I hope my school board will finally do the right thing and let me go back to using the boys’ restroom. Transgender kids should not have to sue their own school boards just for the ability to use the same restrooms as everyone else.”
Because the ruling was issued by the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, and North Carolina is subject to rulings of the 4th, North Carolina may well see it’s hateful HB2 go down.
I fully expect this case to head to the U.S. Supreme Court.
