On July 29, the North Carolina General Assembly overrode 16 vetoed bills – pushing them through to become law despite Gov. Josh Stein’s official stamp of disapproval. One of these bills – which started as a bill aimed to target pornography – puts a bullseye on the backs of the approximately 80,000 transgender North Carolinians, as well as medical providers and even schools in the state.
House Bill 805 (HB 805) originally started as a bill aimed at regulating online pornography, specifically to combat human trafficking and help women remove non-consensual images and content from the internet. The issue garnered unanimous backing in the House, where lawmakers voted 113-0 in favor of the bill in May.
The original language of the bill was co-sponsored by Reps. Laura Budd (D-Matthews) and Neal Jackson (R-Robbins), and Budd told NC Health News she didn’t find out about the changes in the language of her and Jackson’s bill until right before it came before a Senate committee proposing the changes.
“This is a bill that had very real-world impacts for women and men,” Budd said. “[The addition] took a really substantive piece of legislation, that would have had a practical impact for the positive, and just co-opted it for purposes for which it wasn’t intended.”
Once the bill with the original language was passed, Republican State Senator Buck Newton (R- Greene, Wayne, Wilson) saw an opportunity to add language targeting North Carolina’s transgender and gender-nonconforming residents. He, along with the committee established to rework the bill for a formal Senate vote, added amendments making it so the state would only recognize male and female sexes, as well as stating gender identity will not be treated as a legal equivalent to biological sex.
It would also define biological sex based on “reproductive potential or capacity, such as sex chromosomes, naturally occurring sex hormones, gonads, and non-ambiguous internal and external genitalia present at birth, without regard to an individual’s psychological, chosen, or subjective experience of gender.”
“This section ensures that our state follows federal policy and aligns with President Trump’s executive order,” Newton told members of the Senate Judiciary Committee during the reworking of the bill. “This ensures our state maintains eligibility for any and all federal funding.”
Those aren’t the only provisions in HB 805 concerning the LGBTQ+ population in North Carolina. One of the new amendments requires state officials to keep a person’s original birth certificate and new birth certificate on file together in a multi-page document after their sex designation has changed, which forces trans people to out themselves in situations where a birth certificate is needed.
The bill also bans the use of state funds for gender-affirming care for transgender people in state prisons or otherwise in the custody of the Department of Adult Correction, making it impossible for incarcerated transgender folks to receive the care they need. The amendments also extend the time a patient has to bring a medical malpractice lawsuit in cases involving gender-affirming care, which critics say is an attempt to intimidate providers and prevent them from providing often life-saving care to North Carolina’s transgender community.
And it doesn’t stop there – HB 805 also targets transgender students and LGBTQ+ topics in classrooms. The bill allows for parents to both prohibit their child from checking out certain books in the school library for any reason as well as pull their child from any classroom activity or discussion that they believe burdens their religion. The new law also states students on overnight field trips must be housed in lodgings correlating with their assigned sex at birth, forcing transgender youth to use facilities that could result in further ostracization or worse.
Senator Mujtaba Mohammed (D-Mecklenburg) questioned why a bill garnering such bipartisan support would seek to address such partisan issues far away from the bill’s original intention.
“We reached out to our state agencies, and they confirmed that they’ve never authorized sexual procedures, there’s never been gender affirming care, there’s never been any authorized gender affirming surgeries,” Mohammed said to Newton during the debate period. “As a Republican, supporting limited government, why are we coming up with unnecessary laws?”
Sen. Lisa Grafstein (D-Wake), who is also one of the only LGBTQ+ elected officials in the General Assembly, said Newton’s proposal reminded her of the hurricane Helene recovery bill — a bill which originally had bipartisan support until state Republicans packed the legislation with partisan amendments.
“The idea that we’re going to put into law that you cannot be transgendered, or that you cannot be all the things that you are railing against is a fool’s errand,” said Grafstein.
Rep. Nasif Majeed, D-Mecklenburg, was the lone House Democrat to vote to override the veto, giving Republicans exactly the three-fifths portion they needed to put HB 805 into law. When asked by WUNC about why they decided to vote with Republicans, Majeed said there were some “moral issues” where he had “some deep sentiments.” He refused to elaborate on what those issues were when asked.
After the General Assembly voted to override Stein’s veto, the governor went on the record to call the move as he and many others saw it: an attempt to barrage, demonize and attack an entire community who calls the state home.
“My faith teaches me that we are all children of God no matter our differences and that it is wrong to target vulnerable people, as this legislation does,” Stein wrote.
Stein said while he agreed with the portions of the bill protecting people from exploitation on pornographic websites, the sections addressing LGBTQ people are “mean-spirited.” It’s clear state Republicans are determined to ensure North Carolina falls in line with whatever the current presidential administration orders, even if it means altering bipartisan legislation after its approval in one chamber to fulfill whatever agenda they want to force onto North Carolinians.