The only way to fix HB2 is to repeal it

The anger in some parts of the North Carolina business community over the two black eyes and bloody nose the state’s national image has suffered because of HB2 apparently has some legislators stirring about “changing” the law to make it more acceptable.

There’s no way to do that short of one thing: Repeal HB2 and be done with it. Otherwise, those two black eyes and bloody nose will be followed by a knockout punch.

Lawmakers who think they can get away with modifications that will keep the NBA All-Star game in Charlotte and stop the damage to the economy from lost businesses, lost conventions and lost tourism are wrong. It’s especially disturbing that John Skvarla, state secretary of commerce and someone who should be concerned about the loss of business as recruiter in chief, said of HB2 in one meeting in Wilmington, “I don’t see any economic impact big enough to move the needle.”

This is a bad law born of a reaction to a Charlotte City Council ordinance allowing transgender people to use the bathrooms of the gender with which they identify.

But Republican legislative leaders smelled an opportunity to engage in some ridiculous overreach and overrode the Charlotte council. They then tossed into HB2 a rule forbidding local governments from passing their own anti-discrimination ordinances and, while they were at it, prohibited those governments from raising the minimum wage on their own. The law opens the way for discrimination against gay and transgender people should a business owner decide, for example, not to help a gay customer. And they directed that those suing for gender discrimination would have to do so in federal courts

It has been a national disgrace, one likely to be overturned by federal courts on civil rights grounds.

Modifying the law won’t work. One idea is to restore the right to sue for gender discrimination in state courts. Another is to use federal anti-discrimination standards instead of those in HB2. And then there’s the idea of giving people who’ve had gender reassignment surgery a “certificate of sex reassignment.” And an “anti-discrimination task force” might be created.

Those vehemently opposed to HB2, including the American Civil Liberties Union, are not enthusiastic about talk of “modifying” HB2, and they shouldn’t be. Anything short of repeal – which legislative leaders will never do because they care more about saving their face and not the state’s – is unacceptable.

This story was originally published June 29, 2016 at 6:41 PM with the headline "The only way to fix HB2 is to repeal it."