Unlike the several Republican-led states who have passed bills targeting and banning trans girls from girls’ sports this year, North Carolina has decided not to move ahead on its similar bill. The stated reason? It’s not an actual problem that legislators need to address, and a total waste of time. Congratulations to North Carolina’s Republicans on acknowledging reality, for once!
In announcing that the bill was dead, the state’s Republican House Speaker Tim Moore admitted that it was being killed because it was an absolutely unnecessary piece of legislation. Via the News & Observer, emphasis my own:
Moore said what actually took place behind the scenes is that legislative staffers reached out to sports regulatory organizations to find out how large of a problem North Carolinians had with having transgender females playing on female sports teams.
Moore said they found no complaints.
“We had no examples of where this is really a problem and I’m a believer that you shouldn’t pass legislation unless there’s a problem you’re trying to address,” Moore said. “I mean, obviously, these things can spin up and get really controversial and all of that so you know before you go down that road, there needs to be, I would say, an articulated problem.”
Moore said when talking with the bill sponsors they confirmed they hadn’t had complaints from anyone.
It’s been obvious from the beginning that these bills create solutions to issues that don’t exist and are part of a cruel effort to legislate trans youth out of public life. In March, the Associated Press asked legislators sponsoring these bans to cite actual examples of trans girls competing in girls’ sports in their states. As the AP noted, “in almost every case, sponsors cannot cite a single instance in their own state or region where such participation has caused problems.”
Take, for example, the case of West Virginia, where Republican Governor Jim Justice on Wednesday signed the state’s discriminatory ban into law. On Friday morning, he admitted in an interview with MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle that it’s also a nonexistent issue in his state. “I can’t really tell you one,” he admitted.
That reality hasn’t stopped several states from pushing and passing a version of these discriminatory bills, as well as bills banning gender-affirming care for youth—bans that have led some families with trans children to consider fleeing their states.
While Moore didn’t bring up the aftermath of the passage of HB2, North Carolina’s discriminatory bathroom bill, as another reason why the House has killed the bill, it’s hard to imagine that wasn’t on his and other legislators’ minds. And he acknowledged that, as the News & Observer wrote, “the possibility of Title IX violations” also played a role in the decision to table the bill.