In her letter last week, Gupta informed McCrory that HB2 violated Title VII and Title IX. Although the Justice Department cannot strike down the law—a court would have to do that—the federal government can withhold billions of dollars in funding to the state for things like education, housing, and transportation if it determines that the state is unlawfully discriminating. McCrory’s lawsuit on Monday seemed intended to prevent the federal government from withdrawing those funds.

“North Carolina has long held traditions of ensuring equality,” McCrory said in a press conference Monday afternoon. “The majority of the citizens in this great state and this governor did not seek out this issue.”

Both halves of the governor’s statement are open to dispute. As Lynch pointed out, the Old North State has a long history of racial discrimination, like many states. The idea that North Carolina did not seek out the fight also earned immediate derision from HB2’s critics, who noted that the General Assembly had gone to extraordinary lengths—including the special session—to preempt Charlotte’s local ordinance, a rule that had been under debate for months.

One legal issue at stake is whether the gender identity of transgender people is covered by sexual-discrimination clauses under Titles VII and Title IX. McCrory charged that the Obama administration has attempted to write law through the executive branch. But courts have generally held that the executive branch has the right to interpret the Civil Rights Act to include transgender identity—most recently in a decision in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in April. North Carolina is part of the Fourth Circuit.

“This is not a question on which there is a great amount of disagreement. I think it’s highly unlikely” that a court would side with McCrory, said Shannon Gilreath, a professor of law at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem. “What they can do is forestall the inevitable.”

Time may be just what the governor wants. McCrory spoke out against Charlotte’s ordinance before it passed, but he did not seem eager to take the issue on until legislators passed the law. (Even if he had vetoed it, Republican supermajorities might well have overridden his veto, as they have done in the past.) It has become a millstone around his neck, as entertainers boycott the state and major companies, from PayPal to Deutsche Bank, cancel or pull back expansions in the state. The NBA, which is slated to hold its 2016 All-Star Game in Charlotte, has said it will move the game unless the law is repealed.

Meanwhile, the state’s attorney general, Roy Cooper, a Democrat who is running against McCrory in November, has criticized the law, refused to defend it in lawsuits, and used it as an issue against McCrory. Although the law may energize the state’s conservative voters ahead of the election, it risks alienating moderates who elected McCrory in 2012 on the basis of his image as a business-friendly pragmatist. But time might offer an opportunity for negotiation between Charlotte leaders and state Republicans. The two sides have reportedly been in conversation about a way out in which Charlotte would repeal its ordinance and the state would alter HB2, though the likelihood and terms remains unclear.