Republicans in the North Carolina legislature are attempting to recreate a scene from the past in the form of a new anti-transgender bathroom bill.
Senate Bill 516 would require that bathrooms in public schools and other facilities mentioned by the bill “shall only be used by one designated biological sex at one time,” restricting transgender people from using the restroom corresponding to their gender identity.
Many locals to the state will recall a similar bill that was introduced and passed into law in March 2016 by then Governor Pat McCrory. House Bill 2, more commonly known as the “Bathroom Bill” or just HB2, was immensely criticized during its time and is still remembered as being particularly devastating to the state.
Government entities from across the United States banned employees from non-essential travel to North Carolina, many corporations stopped plans conventions, events and jobs in the state, and performers the world over skipped NC entirely while touring. The result was hundreds of millions of dollars lost that would have normally been invested in the state.
However, where HB2 stopped short of just monitoring the bathrooms, SB 516 extends in targeting trans citizens directly and the people that support them.
Sponsored by State Senator Vickie Sawyer of Mooresville and Brad Overcash of Belmont, like HB2, the new “improved” version would restrict bathrooms to correspond with a person’s biological sex. The facilities named by the bill include prisons, domestic violence centers, rape crisis centers and public schools, including public colleges and universities.There are additional measures within the bill that make it particularly insidious. SB 516 would grant someone who “encounters a person of the opposite biological sex” in the facilities the ability to sue that establishment. Another measure introduced in the bill would strip the right of transgender people to change the gender on their birth certificate after receiving sex reassignment surgery. All driver’s licenses within the state would also require a person’s sex at birth, not their gender identity, to be displayed.
In response, North Carolina Democratic Party Chair Anderson Clayton said in a statement that Tuesday’s bill was an attempt to reintroduce HB2. “This is a ploy by the Republican party to distract and divide, and doesn’t do a thing to address the pressing needs that North Carolinians are feeling in their pocketbooks and in their schools,” she said.
Another Democrat, Senator Julie Mayfield, pushed for the state to not return to the days of HB2 duruing a news conference centered around a stack of pro-LGBTQ+ and reproductive rights bills filed by the party.
“We’re done with that,” she said. “We need to be done with that. We need to recognize who people are. We need to allow them to live their lives, and we need to be done with treating people as anything less than whole human beings deserving of respect and dignity.”