North Carolina’s Republican-dominated Legislature voted Wednesday to override Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s vetoes of several GOP bills attacking trans youth, a move that rights advocates called a “devastating” assault on the rights of vulnerable young people.
One of the measures enacted Wednesday over the governor’s opposition outlaws gender-affirming care — including puberty blockers and hormone therapy — for trans minors, making North Carolina the latest state to attack healthcare access for trans youth.
The gender-affirming care ban, H.B. 808, takes effect immediately.
Another bill, S.B. 49, bars any instruction about gender identity and sexuality in K-4 classrooms and “requires that public school teachers in most circumstances alert parents before they call a student by a different name or pronoun,” the Associated Press reported.
A third measure, H.B. 574, prohibits trans girls from playing on sports teams that correspond with their gender identity from middle school through college.
“We need to call this what it is: An all-out attack on queer and transgender youth in North Carolina,” Allison Scott, director of impact and innovation at the Campaign for Southern Equality, said in a statement Wednesday.
The North Carolina Legislature is “going out of its way to blatantly enact the far-right’s anti-LGBTQ wish list, causing harm and discrimination to young people in every area of life, from school to the doctor’s office to the athletic fields,” Scott added.
The growing wave of Republican attacks on trans youth across the U.S. prompted the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) to declare a national state of emergency for LGBTQ+ people in June, with the advocacy group warning that “the multiplying threats facing millions in our community are not just perceived — they are real, tangible, and dangerous.”
More than 550 bills targeting LGBTQ+ rights have been introduced in state legislatures nationwide this year, and more than 80 have been signed into law, according to HRC.
Cathryn Oakley, HRC’s senior director for legal policy, said in a statement Wednesday that “every lawmaker in North Carolina that voted to override the governor’s veto should be ashamed of themselves.”
“These bills range in impact from curriculum censorship to school sports to banning best practice healthcare,” said Oakley, “but they have one important throughline: extremist legislators are trying to gain political power by harming vulnerable young people and their families. Once again, the North Carolina General Assembly has prioritized anti-transgender discrimination over the well-being of North Carolina.”
Republicans secured their veto-proof majority in the North Carolina General Assembly after state Rep. Tricia Cotham, formerly a Democrat, switched parties in April. The GOP already had a veto-proof majority in the Senate when Cotham became a Republican.
On Wednesday, Cotham joined Republicans in voting to override Cooper’s vetoes.
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
Last week, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment. We are presently looking for 340 new monthly donors in the next 5 days.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy