Will expresses concern about "how truly radical the Charlotte City ordinance was" and how it was "entirely over the top." It would appear, however, that the changes made to the ordinance in February simply made it consistent with the majority of other state and local laws prohibiting sex discrimination in places of public accommodation, most of which do not have explicit restroom carveouts written into them. Here are just a few examples of such laws without explicit restroom carveouts:
Missouri: http://www.moga.mo.gov/mostatutes/stathtml/21300000651.html West Virginia: http://www.legis.state.wv.us/wvcode/code.cfm?chap=05&art=11 Utah: http://le.utah.gov/xcode/Title13/Chapter7/13-7-S2.html Oregon: http://www.oregonlaws.org/ors/659A.403 City of Atlanta: https://www.municode.com/library/ga/atlanta/codes/code_of_ordinances?nodeId=COORATGEVOII_CH94HURE When the unusual (but not unprecedented) separate sex discrimination provision in Charlotte's old ordinance was removed, and sex was placed into the general public accommodations provision with all the other protected classes, here is how the operative provision of the new Charlotte ordinance read: It shall be unlawful to deny any person the full and equal enjoyment of the goods services, facilities, advantages, and accommodations of a place of public accommodation because of race, color, religion, sex, marital status, familial status, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, or national origin. If that provision is "truly radical" and "over the top," so are the provisions of numerous other jurisdictions. And of course, as Doug has pointed out, if the lack of an explicit restroom carveout in the new Charlotte ordinance was the North Carolina legislature's real concern, it could have passed a law limited to that issue. Instead, it removed all municipal nondiscrimination protections for LGBT individuals. At this point, it seems pretty obvious that having failed to convince the public that protecting against sexual-orientation and gender-identiy discrimination is a bad idea as a general matter, opponents of LGBT nondiscrimination laws are focusing on the restroom issue because the "men in women's bathrooms" talking point has proven politically salient (see, e.g., Houston campaign), even if there is no evidence that it has ever been a problem in any of the 21 states or hundreds of municipalities that have added sexual-orientation discrimination and gender-identity to their public accommodations laws. - Jim On Thu, Mar 31, 2016 at 2:20 PM, Will Esser <willes...@yahoo.com> wrote: > Paul, > > My main point was how truly radical the Charlotte City ordinance was in > entirely doing away with unisex bathrooms in public accommodations. (I > trust you are not taking the position that it is advisable public policy to > allow non-transgender, straight boys into the girls showers in the YMCA?) > The point was that the Charlotte City ordinance was entirely over the top. > People can have a healthy debate about whether the NC law should go > farther in providing allowance for changes to a birth certificate, but > that's a very different debate than entirely doing away with unisex > bathrooms. The Charlotte City Council used a club when they should have > tried a scalpel. > > To turn this back to religion and the law, let's assume that the Charlotte > City ordinance had gone into place as drafted (i.e. a > non-discrimination provision that does not allow discrimination on the > basis of sex with no exceptions for bathrooms). The YMCA is defined as a > public accommodation under the ordinance and it is sued when it refuses > to allow boys into the girls' showers. The YMCA argues that it won't let > the boys into the girls showers based upon its religious principles which > flow from the Bible, including a prohibition on pre-marital sex and an > obligation to protect youth from temptation. > > How do listserv members think that comes out? Isn't this an example in > which the religious principles of the YMCA should clearly trump the > non-discrimination provision? (Again, this is not a fictional > hypothetical. That is actually the ordinance the Charlotte City Council > passed and which would have gone into law but for the NC legislature's > action). > > Will > > > Will Esser > >
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