NC attorney general criticizes new law

Associated Press

RALEIGH, N.C.

North Carolina’s new law limiting LGBT protections is a “national embarrassment,” and the state’s lawyers won’t defend it against a federal challenge from gay-rights advocates, Attorney General Roy Cooper announced Tuesday.

The law Republican Gov. Pat McCrory signed last week requires people to use multi-stall bathrooms that match their birth certificates at state agencies, schools and universities, even if that means forcing transgender people with heavy beards to use women’s rooms and putting people with feminine appearances in men’s rooms.

The law also makes clear local measures can’t protect people on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity, or require businesses to provide higher minimum wages or paid sick leave. And it blocks workers from suing in state courts over workplace discrimination based on race, religion, color, national origin, age, sex or handicap, directing complaints instead to a state commission.

“Not only is this new law a national embarrassment, it will set North Carolina’s economy back if we don’t repeal it,” Cooper said. “We know that businesses here and all over the country have taken a strong stance in opposition to this law.”

Cooper’s announcement raises the stakes as the Democrat tries to unseat McCrory this November. National Democrats consider it their best opportunity to move a Republican out of a governor’s mansion. The campaigns of McCrory and Cooper already have raised more than $13 million combined, and the Republican Governors Association has reserved $4 million in ad time for the fall.

McCrory, a defendant in a federal lawsuit, has doubled down on justifying his signature. The governor didn’t immediately respond to Cooper’s decision, but a social-conservative group said Tuesday that more than 300 business owners have signed on to a letter thanking the governor and the Legislature.

On Monday, McCrory said he has “not had one corporation tell me that they’re threatening to leave.”

Senate leader Phil Berger said Tuesday that Cooper should resign as attorney general for failing to defend the law, and accused him of pandering to left-wing backers as he runs for governor.