Cooper Usurps Legislative Powers to Allow Men in Girls’ Bathrooms

RALEIGH – Roy Cooper has gone back to the well to force the issue of allowing men in girls’ restrooms and locker rooms. Cooper signed an executive order Wednesday that expanded discrimination protections for state employees and the employees of state contractors to include gender identity and expression.

“Today, we take the next steps as I put into place the most comprehensive anti-discrimination provisions North Carolina has ever had and I submit a settlement of a lawsuit that can help us put HB2 even further behind us,” said Cooper in a statement.

It means that boys that “identify” as girls cannot be prohibited from using girls bathrooms, locker rooms, and showers in schools across the state.

Moreover, Cooper and N.C. Attorney General Josh Stein also announced they had joined a settlement in a federal lawsuit against the State brought by a transgender man that argued keeping boys out of girls bathrooms and locker rooms at government facilities was somehow a violation of civil rights.

Comically, Cooper said he wished to avoid “drawn-out legal battles” with the settlement, even while Cooper has time and again sued the legislature in order to initiate “drawn-out legal battles” that prevent Republican majorities from implementing policies the left doesn’t like.

Tami Fitzgerald, Executive Director of the N.C. Values Coalition did not mince words in her scathing response to Cooper’s overreach.

“The Governor’s and Attorney General’s actions today constitute a massive power grab, with sweeping changes that only the Legislative Branch has the authority to enact. After signing into law earlier this year HB 142, which kept in place longstanding laws that required that showers and bathrooms be used in accordance with one’s sex on their birth certificate, Governor Cooper has betrayed the people of North Carolina with an Executive Order that not only allows boys and men into girls’ and women’s showers and bathrooms, but also forces private businesses to adopt sweeping LGBT special rights. Josh Stein has betrayed the people of NC by failing to defend the laws of the state and, instead, elevating LGBT privileges above the rights of common everyday people to privacy and safety in Bathrooms and showers. It is despicable, and the voters of NC will hold these two accountable.”

The Democrat from Rocky Mount campaigned heavily in the 2016 gubernatorial race on opposing the notorious House Bill 2: legislation that stipulated individuals must use the restroom that corresponds to the sex listed on their birth certificate in state owned or operated facilities.

Always ignored in H.B. 2 discussions by leftists is the fact that the bill was in response to the Charlotte City Council passing an ordinance that would levy fines against any Charlotte area private business that did not accommodate a person’s restroom preferences and opened them up to lawsuits for refusing to allow men in girls’ restrooms.

H.B. 2 banned such punishments directed at private businesses and further clarified that state facilities (schools) would require individuals to use the bathroom or locker room that corresponded to their birth gender.

Cooper milked the transgender issue for all it was worth, even going so far as to recruit CEOs to publicly boycott the state and then complaining that North Carolina was losing business for not being inclusive enough. He unashamedly through North Carolina under the bus in order to launch partisan attacks that would put him in the governor’s mansion.

Now, with veto after veto getting overridden, Cooper has gone back to his signature issue – sucking up to the LGBT community.

Here at First in Freedom Daily, we regard institutionalized discrimination as abhorrent. Similarly, trampling on the rights of business owners, usurping the authority of the popularly elected legislature, and forcing radical leftist policies upon us that needlessly subject our children to risk of predation in an effort to appease radical leftists is also detestable.

There are no rights, save individual rights. No special groups, or factions, or classes that deserve privileges above others. Violating one group’s rights to enforce the imagined rights of another is contradictory and on its face.