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| State Sen. Jay Chaudhuri, D-Wake, speaks on the senate floor during a special session of the North Carolina General Assembly called to consider repeal of NC HB2 in Raleigh, N.C., Wednesday, Dec. 21, 2016. North Carolina's legislature reconvened to see if enough lawmakers are willing to repeal a 9-month-old law that limited LGBT rights, including which bathrooms transgender people can use in public schools and government buildings. |
RALEIGH, N.C.
(AP) -- Repealing North Carolina's law limiting LGBT protections
at the close of a bitter election year was supposed to heal blows to
the economy and perhaps open a truce in the culture wars in at least one
corner of the divided United States.
The
failure of state lawmakers to follow through instead shows how much
faith each side has lost in the other, as Americans segregate themselves
into communities of us and them, defined by legislative districts that
make compromise unlikely.
The deal was
supposedly reached with input from top politicians and industry leaders:
Charlotte agreed to eliminate its anti-discrimination ordinance on the
condition that state lawmakers then repeal the legislation known as
House Bill 2, which had been a response to Charlotte's action.
But
bipartisan efforts to return both the city and state to a more
harmonious past fell apart amid mutual distrust, and neither side seemed
to worry about retribution in the next election.
With
GOP map-drawers drawing most legislative districts to be
uncompetitively red or blue, politicians see little downside to avoiding
a negotiated middle-ground. And since the day Republicans passed and
signed it into law last March, HB2 has reflected these broad divisions
in society.
The failed repeal shows the same
polarization, said David Lublin, a Southern politics expert in American
University's School of Public Affairs.
North
Carolina had been "seen as the forefront of the new South," focusing on
education and economic development, and wasn't "viewed as crazy-right
wing or crazy-left wing," Lublin said. Keeping the law in effect, he
said, "reverses that impression."
It was always more than just a "bathroom bill."
Republican
lawmakers commanding veto-proof majorities framed HB2 as a rebuke to
the values of Charlotte and other urban, white-collar communities where
Democrats are clustered and where gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender
people generally find support.
HB2 - which
omits these people from state anti-discrimination protections, bars
local governments from protecting them with their own ordinances, and
orders transgender people to use facilities that match their birth
certificates - created a backlash that has cost the state's economy
millions.
Corporations, entertainers and
high-profile sporting events backed out to avoid being seen as endorsing
discrimination. Two-thirds of North Carolina voters surveyed in
November's Associated Press exit poll said they oppose the law, and even
Trump's supporters narrowly trended against it.
IBM
executives worry that the failure to repeal HB2 is an obstacle to
attracting the best employees to its largest North American operation,
in Research Triangle Park outside Raleigh, home to an outsized number of
college graduates from around the world.
"The
state of North Carolina has a tremendous amount to do to recover its
reputation as a great place to live, work and do business," IBM chief
diversity officer Lindsey-Rae McIntyre said in an interview Thursday.
"Our position is that we will fight this, that we are deeply committed
to hiring the very best, diverse talents and that this law and this
mindset does nothing to fuel our commitment to hiring that talent."
Across
the divide, supporters of HB2 express anger against what they feel are
challenges to their religious freedoms, and fear that women could be
endangered by transgender people in public bathrooms and showers.
"As
much as North Carolina's 'reputation' may have been harmed in the eyes
of some, just as many - if not more - respected us for the stance we
took in support of privacy and security protections of our public
restrooms and dressing facilities," said GOP state Rep. Chris Millis,
whose district covers all or parts of two largely rural, coastal
counties where President-elect Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton by a
margin of more than 2-to-1.
The divide cuts both ways in the legislature.
Rep.
Cecil Brockman represents a heavily Democratic district in urban
Guilford County, where voters chose Barack Obama over Mitt Romney in
2012 by nearly a 4-to-1 margin. Brockman, who publicly identifies as
bisexual, pleaded with his colleagues to repeal what he called an
"offensive, disastrous" law.
Brockman's district is about to change.
After
Republicans were accused of unlawfully clustering black voters to
diminish their influence, a federal court panel ruled that about a sixth
of the state's 170 legislative districts were illegally drawn. The
judges ordered North Carolina lawmakers to redraw districts by March 15
and to hold new elections in November.
If
lawmakers don't resolve it somehow, HB2 is likely to be a hot-button
issue in those elections, although even the most one-sided districts are
unlikely to change enough to unseat Republican majorities in the evenly
divided state.
Polls show Republican Gov. Pat
McCrory's support for the law played into his loss - by about 10,000
votes out of 4.7 million cast - to Democratic Gov.-elect Roy Cooper, who
ran in part on repealing HB2.
Republican
legislative leaders and Cooper, who appears to have had a significant
role in brokering the deal that ultimately collapsed, are still hopeful
that a solution can be reached in 2017. The General Assembly, with
newcomers elected last month, begins in less than three weeks.
"I
certainly believe that negotiations will resume, and frankly we all
know that we have to work through this," House Speaker Tim Moore told
the AP in a phone interview Thursday, but "an issue with strong social
overtones is always a problematic vote for members."
