North Carolina and U.S. Justice Department Sue Each Other Over Transgender "Bathroom Bill"

In the war over North Carolina's controversial "bathroom bill," neither Gov. Pat McCrory nor U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch are blinking. Both sides have now filed lawsuits against each other.

Lynch last week warned McCrory that HB2 violated Titles VII and IX of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as well as the Violence Against Women Act, which protect against sex discrimination. She gave the governor until close of business Monday to reverse course on the law. But instead, McCrory doubled down.

McCrory and the head of his Department of Public Safety, Frank Perry, filed a lawsuit Monday morning charging the U.S. Department of Justice with “baseless and blatant overreach” in its attempt to overturn HB2, the notorious “bathroom bill.” The lawsuit was filed just hours before a federal deadline to abandon its controversial law forcing transgender individuals to use the bathroom of the gender on their birth certificate, not their gender identity.

As promised, the Justice Department responded Monday afternoon with a lawsuit of its own, calling HB2 "impermissibly discriminatory" and seeking a statewide bar on its enforcement. Lynch, who herself is from North Carolina, compared HB2 to Jim Crow laws. "Let us reflect on the obvious but often neglected lesson that state-sanctioned discrimination never looks good in hindsight," she said Monday afternoon.

Directly addressing the transgender community, she told them, "Please know that history is on your side."

At least five federal agencies, including the Department of Education, are threatening to withhold funds from North Carolina as long as its laws are out of compliance with federal non-discrimination requirements.

Lynch said the Justice Department is evaluating anti-LGBT proposals elsewhere in the country and could take similar measures against other states or municipalities that are found to violate federal anti-discrimination laws.

McCrory is trying to make his state’s discriminatory law a cause célèbre for the "religious liberty" crowd that loves to refuse to serve pizza or bake wedding cakes or issue marriage licenses for certain people. “This is no longer just a North Carolina issue,” he said Wednesday, “because this conclusion by the Department of Justice impacts every state, every university and almost every employer in the United States of America.”

McCrory's lawsuit asks the court to rule that the bathroom bill is not discriminatory because transgender individuals are not a protected class under U.S. law.

In a statement, McCrory reiterated his belief that “this is now a national issue” that “needs to be resolved at the federal level.”

“The Obama administration is bypassing Congress by attempting to rewrite the law and set restroom policies for public and private employers across the country, not just North Carolina,” McCrory said.

McCrory and Perry call the Justice Department’s threat of further legal action “real but misplaced.”

“North Carolina does not treat transgender employees differently from non-transgender employees,” they state in the lawsuit. “All state employees are required to use the bathroom and changing facilities assigned to persons of their same biological sex, regardless of gender identity, or transgender status.”

Right. Of course, that statement could easily be turned around to say that only transgender people are forced to use the facilities that don’t correspond to their gender identities.

One last thing: It’s worth noting that letting people choose their bathroom doesn't mean you're letting them choose to assault or harass or spy on anyone. That's still illegal.

Not that there’s ever been a case of a transgender person assaulting someone in a bathroom. Trans people are much more likely to be on the receiving end of an assault.