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LEXIE CANNES STATE OF TRANS — The North Carolina anti-transgender ‘Bathroom Bill’ saga has suddenly turned into a television legal drama miniseries. The actual drama unfolding in NC however, requires a suspension of disbelief previously unseen in a TV script.



The most historic moment on the Monday showdown occurred when Attorney General Loretta Lynch addressed transgender people: “We see you. We stand with you, and we will do everything we can to protect you going forward.”

A few hours prior the U.S. Department of Justice’s deadline for North Carolina to lift the transgender ban, Governor Pat McCrory filed a lawsuit in Federal district court to stop federal funds to the state from bring cut off. McCrory stated that the DOJ’s action was “a baseless and blatant overreach.”

McCrory: “Ultimately, I think it’s time for the U.S. Congress to bring clarity to our national anti-discrimination provisions. Right now, the Obama administration is bypassing Congress by attempting to rewrite the law.”

A few hours later, the Justice Department filed their own lawsuit against the state arguing that NC’s transgender ban forces “public agencies to follow a facially discriminatory policy.”

Attorney General Loretta Lynch: “They created state-sponsored discrimination against transgender individuals who simply seek to engage in the most private of functions in a place of safety and security. None of us can stand by when a state enters the business of legislating identity and insists that a person pretend to be something or someone that they are not.”

Lynch is a North Carolina native. More from Lynch on Monday:

“This is not the first time that we have seen discriminatory responses to historic moments of progress for our nation. We saw it in the Jim Crow laws that followed the Emancipation Proclamation. We saw it in the fears and widespread resistance to Brown v. Board of Education.

This action is about a great deal more than bathrooms. State-sanctioned discrimination never looks good and never works in hindsight. It was not so very long ago that states, including North Carolina, [had] other signs above restrooms, water fountains and on public accommodations, keeping people out based on a distinction without a difference. We have moved beyond those dark days, but not without a tremendous amount of pain and suffering and an ongoing fight to keep moving forward. Let us write a different story this time.”

Wow. Stay tuned.

My previous article on NC‘s transgender ban: https://lexiecannes.com/2016/04/08/bruce-springsteen-stands-up-for-transgender-people-pulls-rug-out-from-under-north-carolinas-governor/

Sources: News & Observer, New York Times and Politico.

Watch LEXIE CANNES right now: http://www.amazon.com/Lexie-Cannes-CourtneyODonnell/dp/B00KEYH3LQ

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Categories: Discrimination, Equality, Civil Rights, Judicial, Courts, Transgender, Transsexual, Trans