North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory is boiling mad about that Fourth Circuit ruling on Tuesday to deny review of a
Virginia bathroom rights case that went in a transgender teen’s favor.
The Fourth Circuit includes North Carolina. So McCrory has good reason to sweat over the fate of his beloved HB 2, and his own political future.
And he’s lashing out. Here’s the statement his office released Wednesday, titled “Governor McCrory Defends the Basic Privacy of Our Children in Schools in Response to Virginia Case”:
“School systems throughout our nation should be allowed to make sensible accommodations for students whose gender identity conflicts with their own physical anatomy. Yet the extreme Obama courts and administration deny this common sense flexibility at the expense of privacy for millions of boys and girls in our schools’ restrooms, locker rooms and shower facilities.
“It’s unfortunate that our attorney general Roy Cooper didn’t join us to protect the expectation of privacy for our children.
“As Judge Niemeyer notes in his opinion, ‘..they can override these provisions by redefining sex to mean how any given person identifies himself or herself at any given time, thereby, of necessity, denying all affected persons the dignity and freedom of bodily privacy.’
“He went on to say, and I agree, ‘…the momentous nature of this issue deserves an open road to the Supreme Court to seek the Court’s controlling construction of Title IX for national application.’
“Alternatively, the U.S. Congress could take action to clarify the scope of federal anti-discrimination laws so there is consistent application across our country.”
“Extreme Obama courts”? Hmmmm.
David Badash at The New Civil Rights Movement points out that….
Tuesday’s majority ruling was written by a judge originally placed on the federal bench by President George W. Bush. And while President Obama nominated Judge Henry Floyd to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, he was unanimously confirmed in 2011 by a majority Republican Senate, 96-0. A South Carolina native, his nomination was supported by Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham.
Also: Judge Paul V. Niemeyer wrote the lone dissenting opinion of the panel of three. Just so you know.
And: Maybe it’s not so “unfortunate” for Cooper that he didn’t join the Republican side on this.
McCrory and his Democratic challenger in November are currently neck-and-neck in the polls, and Cooper would be doing even better if not for an outlier poll from conservative Civitas. That’s all the more reason for the governor to feel a little cranky.
