What are the penalties for violating NC HB2?

Here’s the text of the law. And here’s a scenario:

Mary is a trans woman who works at UNC-CH. She goes to a basketball game at the Dean Dome. At halftime she has to pee. There’s a security guard who, earlier in the day, was told by his supervisor not to bother anyone who was minding their own business in the bathroom–implicitly to ignore the text of HB 2.

Mary says to the guard, “Look, I’m trans–where should I go?”

The guard shrugs and says, “Up to you!”

Mary uses the women’s room.

A previous student of Mary’s recognizes her and calls the police.

What penalties–legal or HR–could Mary face, according to NC law? What about the security guard? What about the guard’s boss?

Huh–it looks like police are as confused as I am.

Do I need a birth certificate to use a rest room in NC?

The law doesn’t specify. I don’t want to get out of GQ territory, but what I’m reading suggests that maybe the law could have been drafted more carefully; there do not appear to be any penalties in the law at all for failing to comply with it, nor are there any enforcement provisions. I was wondering whether it would interact with previously-existing law in a way that led to clear penalties or enforcement, but I can’t find anyone suggesting that that’s the case.

I guess I’d add a third piece: let’s say that a transgender man uses the men’s room at a courthouse, and the presiding judge or police really hate trans people. What’s the maximum penalty that could legally be thrown at that person?

I thought “ignorance of the law” was no excuse.

A similar question could apply if a cis person uses the bathroom corresponding to the other gender. I highly doubt if there are laws directly governing people’s bathroom usage.

I would speculate that you could possibly make a case for trespassing or something like that. Or if the guy got really confrontational with the security person, perhaps it could end up being something like disturbing the peace.

Thse are reasonable speculations, and similar to mine. I’m interested in whether there’s clear statutory or case law on the matter.

Avoid the confusion by staying out of the state entirely!

It is- sometimes. There are several SCOTUS decisions on this.
CHEEK v. UNITED STATES is one example. United States v.
Murdock. is another.

Can’t; I live here. And just in case you don’t know, the esteemed President pro tem of our Esteemed State Senate, Senator Phil Berger (R - Rockingham), the one out of whose alleged brain this slime oozed, always has a three-day growth of white beard, and I don’t mean a Hollywood 3-day growth, either; I mean a “we picked up a wino from the gutter and slapped a tie on him” three-day growth. I leave it up to you to decide what he might be trying to project about his own gender.

Or by learning to hold it in for a long time. Eventually you’ll get to another state.

You can move. I suggest you hire a out-of state moving company, too.

Not many states are much better. Last I read, 29 states had similar laws in the works. Hopefully the won’t pass after seeing how stupid it is in practice.

So, I’ve reported this thread due to non-GQ stuff; until a mod gets here, could folks get themselves in control? There are plenty of other threads for arguing the merits of the law. I’m trying to find an answer to a factual question here.

That’s exactly what I just suggested …

While I appreciate the spirit of you suggestions, I hope you will not mind if I resent them as well. This is my home, and a wonderful place to live, with millions of thoughtful and enlightened people. Politically speaking, it just so happens that there are a few more gerrymandered persons on the other side. It’s our job as North Carolinians to move a few of the politicians out of their berths in Raleigh. (They don’t like public school teachers, either, regarding them as leeches sucking off the public tit, to mix a metaphor. They passed a law in 2013 eliminating tenure and continuing contracts, and offering a measly pittance, amounting to around $30 per paycheck, to those who were willing to sign away their tenure rights before the law went into effect in 2018-19 - in fact, the law required local systems to select 1/4 of their teacher workforce to be offered the reduction, without specifying how the selection was to be made. The state Supreme Court just ruled that it is unconstitutional to eliminate the rights entered into by contract with vested teachers - but that teachers hired after the law goes into effect will still have to do without tenure rights, and will need to sign a new contract every year. I guess you know by now what I do for a living; I’m vested, so screw 'em).

Long story short - there are several personal reasons why it is highly impractical for me to move at this time - but I damn sure wouldn’t move to NC if I were a young teacher - or a dang queer pervert faggot homasekshul. :mad::mad::mad::mad::mad:

What you got against folks what are home shkuled? :confused:
:smiley:

Didn’t you read my post? I need raw material to process, man!

:smiley:

Moderator Note

As this says, there’s a lot of non-GQ stuff in this thread. I’m not going to quote each individual off-topic post, but let’s stick to the facts in this thread.

This law is a terrible, backward public policy. It’s a a"solution" in search of a problem and I am offended by it. Furthermore, I don’t think the people who adopted this law really know what it does. Media coverage also differs significantly from what the law actually says.

I relied on this copy of the bill (PDF) http://www.ncleg.net/Sessions/2015E2/Bills/House/PDF/H2v4.pdf, but I’m not an expert on North Carolina law, so please take my analysis with a grain of salt. I tried to qualify particular gaps in my understanding below but I may not have done so everywhere. I am also not addressing federal constitutional or federal law preemption arguments that may apply to facets of the legislation.

The bill generally requires “local boards of education” and “public agencies” (including the University of North Carolina) to adopt policies that require transgender people to use the bathroom associated with the sex on their birth certificate. However, I don’t believe this law is self-executing. That is, it doesn’t change anything until the local school boards and the public agencies actually change their policies. Any analysis of the law’s effects must wait until these agencies adopt policies. One public agency might have a policy that says no one can use the bathroom unless they present a birth certificate to a hall monitor. Another agency might have a policy that just tells a transgender person to use their birth certificate bathroom but doesn’t require any evidence. One might have a penalty that says the person violating the provision is fines $100 and another might have a policy that bans the violator from ever setting foot in the agency’s buildings again. Until we see the policies, we don’t know how they work.

It is also possible that some public agencies may lack the statutory authority to regulate the bathroom use of the transgender people who might use their facilities. For example, an agency regulating junk yards may only have authority to regulate and fine junk yard operators. If a transgender person isn’t a junk yard operator, the agency might not have the authority to make its bathroom policies binding on the transgender person using its bathroom. It is also possible that state courts will interpret the statute as giving the agencies the authority they need to adopt policies that are binding on the transgender people. The law doesn’t specify penalties, so there is a question of state law whether, for example, the agency regulating weights and measures will have the authority to specify a penalty of 50 years in prison for a violation (I’m being hyperbolic here, but if courts read extra authority into the law, they will also have to read in some limits for these agencies). This is part of the civil code, so perhaps only civil penalties, like fines, could apply.

This is not a criminal law and I don’t know if the police would have any authority to enforce it. Depending on the particular policies public that agencies adopt, police might find their enforcement authority elsewhere. For example, public agencies might adopt policies that declare violators to be trespassers and the police might have authority to enforce the law against trespassing. However, this would be hard for them to do. It would generally require the facts and circumstances within the officer’s knowledge to be sufficient to warrant a belief that a crime has been committed. Unless the officer knows what’s on that person’s birth certificate, I don’t think an officer could arrest anyone under this law and the related policies. Still, it’s ripe for abuse and likely to lead to harassment of suspected transgender people.

Another provision of the law gives public accommodations (for example, hotels, restaurants, and stores) the right, but not the obligation, to discriminate against transgender people in their bathroom use. It says that a public accommodation can’t discriminate “because of race, religion, color, national origin, or biological sex, provided that designating multiple or single occupancy bathrooms or changing facilities according to biological sex…shall not be deemed to constitute discrimination. [emphasis added]” So unless public accommodations choose to discriminate against transgender people, this part of the law has no effect.

The open question then is, what do businesses have to do if they want to discriminate against transgender people? My personal feeling is that “Men” and “Women” signs that pre-date the law shouldn’t automatically be interpreted as expressing the business’s intent to discriminate against transgender people. So, in my opinion, the businesses will have to make the discriminatory intent of their Men’s and Women’s signs clear to transgender people. Perhaps they could hang additional signs up outside their restrooms to announce their intention to discriminate against transgender people but I doubt they will be eager to invite that kind of attention. More likely, they will just choose to police based on the appearance of their customers and the ignorance of their employees and customers. This will cause transgender people to face needless humiliating confrontations. No one needs these fights, but North Carolina seems to be seeking them out.

Another issue is that this law prohibits sex discrimination except in the case of bathroom policing of transgender people. Stores that choose to discriminate on an ad hoc basis like I describe above better pick on the correct targets. For example, assume a transgender man (that is, a person born with female genitalia but who identifies as a man) is undergoing androgen therapy, has a beard and is very muscular, and needs to use the bathroom. To be safe, he uses the women’s room, because that’s what his birth certificate says. Under the law, stores can either restrict him to the women’s room or it can allow him to use either. If the employees of that store confront him and bar him from the women’s room, they are outside the scope of the discrimination carve-out this law creates. The store will have discriminated against him on the basis of his sex, and not in a way that is bathroom discrimination protected by this law. It isn’t his obligation to make his gender presentation match the biological sex on his birth certificate and the non-discrimination provision doesn’t create a special carve out for this store’s particular form of back-assedness. The store employee isn’t authorized by this statute to deny his use of the women’s room. Unfortunately, he would need to sue in state court to enforce these state non-discrimination rights. He would face judges elected by the same people who elected the legislators who passed the stupid law and juries drawn from that electorate. I am guessing they would not be sympathetic audience to a transgender man’s plight.

My biggest issue concern with this law is that it will embolden vigilantes to enforce their misconception of the law based on bad news reporting. We don’t need to give bigots new reasons to take their anger out on transgender people.