March, 28 2016, 11:15am EDT

Advocacy Groups File Federal Lawsuit Challenging North Carolina's Sweeping Anti-LGBT Law
ACLU, Lambda Legal, and Equality NC sue on behalf of LGBT North Carolinians
RALEIGH, N.C.
Today, the American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU of North Carolina, Lambda Legal, and Equality North Carolina filed a lawsuit challenging North Carolina's sweeping anti-LGBT law, HB 2. The case, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina against North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory, Attorney General Roy Cooper, and the University of North Carolina, is on behalf of two transgender North Carolinians, Joaquin Carcano, a UNC-Chapel Hill employee, and Payton McGarry, a UNC-Greensboro student, and Angela Gilmore, a lesbian and North Carolina Central University law professor.
"HB 2 is hurtful and demeaning. I just want to go to work and live my life. This law puts me in the terrible position of either going into the women's room where I clearly don't belong or breaking the law," said plaintiff Joaquin Carcano. "But this is about more than bathrooms, this is about my job, my community, and my ability to get safely through my day and be productive like everyone else in North Carolina."
"We're challenging this extreme and discriminatory measure in order to ensure that everyone who lives in and visits North Carolina is protected under the law," said Chris Brook, Legal Director of the ACLU of North Carolina. "This cruel, insulting, and unconstitutional law is an attack on fairness in employment, education, and local governance that encourages discrimination against thousands of LGBT people who call North Carolina home, and particularly targets transgender men and women. HB 2 aims to override local school board policies, local public accommodations laws, and more."
"No legislature should be using its power to require cities, counties, or school districts to discriminate against anyone. This law is a targeted and unprecedented attack on the LGBT community, particularly against transgender people, both young people and adults," said Tara Borelli, Senior Attorney with Lambda Legal. "Clearly HB 2 is unconstitutional as it not only violates the guarantees of equal protection and due process in the U.S. Constitution but it also violates Title IX by requiring discrimination in education. North Carolina legislators cannot strip equality out of the Constitution and the law. "
"The rhetoric on display last week by some members of our legislature showed just how transparent their anti-LGBT motives were. Not only did they keep the bill language secret until the morning it was introduced but it only took 12 hours to pass and sign into law a bill with terrible consequences for thousands of North Carolinians. North Carolina may also now face a loss of federal education funding, revenue from businesses that relocate or choose not to set-up shop here, and potential income-generating sporting and entertainment events," said Chris Sgro, Executive Director of Equality NC, the statewide LGBT advocacy group. "Now is the time to be on the right side of history, because together we will show the politicians that North Carolina refuses to be a leader in bigotry."
The plaintiffs in this case are: Joaquin Carcano, 27, a UNC-Chapel Hill employee from Carrboro; Payton McGarry, 20, a UNC-Greensboro student who was born and raised in Wilson; and Angela Gilmore, 52, a North Carolina Central University law professor. Also named plaintiffs in the lawsuit are Equality North Carolina and the ACLU of North Carolina.
The ACLU and the ACLU of North Carolina, and Lambda Legal are filing the lawsuit together as co-counsel in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina. In the complaint being filed today, the plaintiffs allege that through HB 2, North Carolina sends a purposeful message that LGBT people are second-class citizens who are undeserving of the privacy, respect, and protections afforded others in the state. The complaint argues that HB 2 is unconstitutional because it violates the Equal Protection and Due Process clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment because it discriminates on the basis of sex and sexual orientation and is an invasion of privacy for transgender people. The law also violates Title IX by discriminating against students and school employees on the basis of sex.
To read the complaint: https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/field_document/dkt_1_-_carcano_v._mccrory_complaint.pdf
To reach Lambda Legal's Help Desk visit: lambdalegal.org/help or call toll-free: 1-866-542-8336
To reach the ACLU of North Carolina for legal help, visit https://acluofnc.org/Ask-for-Help/get-legal-help.html, email intake@acluofnc.org.
The American Civil Liberties Union was founded in 1920 and is our nation's guardian of liberty. The ACLU works in the courts, legislatures and communities to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to all people in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States.
(212) 549-2666LATEST NEWS
'An Attempt to Silence the Public's Voice': Trump Moves to Accelerate Oil Project Approvals
"The announcement is another giveaway to the fossil fuel billionaires who spent millions to put Trump back in the White House, justified by a fake 'energy emergency.'"
Apr 24, 2025
The Trump administration announced late Wednesday that it is moving to implement new permitting procedures designed to speed up reviews and approvals of oil and gas development, a plan that environmentalists called an attack on the public's right to weigh in on projects that would directly impact communities across the United States.
The U.S. Department of the Interior, led by billionaire oil industry ally Doug Burgum, said the new permitting measures would "take a multi-year process down to just 28 days at most," citing President Donald Trump's declaration of a "national energy emergency" at the start of his second term.
"In response, the Department will utilize emergency authorities under existing regulations for the National Environmental Policy Act, Endangered Species Act, and the National Historic Preservation Act," the agency said.
The expedited permitting procedures will apply to crude oil, fracked gas, coal, and other energy sources favored by the president, according to the Interior Department.
Notably absent from Interior's list are wind and solar, which accounted for a record 17% of U.S. electricity generation last year. As it has moved to boost the fossil fuel industry—the primary driver of the global climate emergency—the Trump administration has canceled grants and halted construction for renewable energy projects.
"The real national emergency is the cabal of oil and gas CEOs harming working people and wrecking the climate to line their pockets."
Collin Rees, U.S. campaign manager at Oil Change International, said in a statement that the Interior Department's announcement of accelerated permitting procedures for dirty energy "is an attempt to silence the public's voice in decision-making, taking away tools that ensure our communities have a say in the fossil fuel project proposals that threaten our water, land, and public health."
"The announcement is another giveaway to the fossil fuel billionaires who spent millions to put Trump back in the White House, justified by a fake 'energy emergency,'" said Rees. "The U.S. is the largest oil and gas producer and is expanding extraction faster than any other nation. The real national emergency is the cabal of oil and gas CEOs harming working people and wrecking the climate to line their pockets."
Alejandro Camacho, a professor of environmental law at the University of California, Irvine, wrote on social media that the Trump administration is "once again disregarding the law, environment, and even market data. Ignoring environmental laws to approve dirty projects claiming an energy emergency that does not exist."
"Meanwhile, he's killing massive private wind power projects," Camacho added. "Sounds like an emergency to me."
The permitting announcement comes days after an internal document, leaked on Earth Day, showed that Trump's Interior Department intends to prioritize weakening environmental protections and opening federal lands to fossil fuel extraction.
The department is also "looking at whether to scale back" national monuments, including Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni-Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon, Ironwood Forest, Chuckwalla, Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks, Bears Ears, and Grand Staircase-Escalante, The Washington Postreported Thursday.
"Interior Department officials are poring over geological maps to analyze the monuments' potential for mining and oil production and assess whether to revise their boundaries," according to the Post.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Michigan's Democratic AG Under Fire After Armed Agents Raid Homes of Palestine Defenders
"We are totally convinced that, but for their viewpoints, these students would not have been targeted," said one attorney.
Apr 23, 2025
Federal and local law enforcement officers smashed their way into the Michigan homes of pro-Palestine student organizers on Wednesday in what the state attorney general's office said was a vandalism probe—but critics called an attack on dissent against Israel's genocidal assault on Gaza.
Backed by FBI agents, officers broke into homes in Ypsilanti, Canton, and Ann Arbor on Wednesday morning. Video uploaded to social media by Students Allied for Freedom and Equality, a Students for Justice in Palestine chapter, showed officers battering down the door to a Ypsilanti house before others rushed into the home barking commands with guns drawn and pointed at the residents.
"No search warrant was provided," someone says in the video as the invaders crashed through the homes' locked front door. People in the house said their phones and other electronic devices and possessions, including vehicles, were taken.
🚨BREAKING | Officials Confirms Raids in Multiple Cities; TAHRIR Coalition Says FBI Agents, Michigan State Police, and Local Officers Targeted Pro-Palestine Organizers
[image or embed]
— Drop Site (@dropsitenews.com) April 23, 2025 at 12:44 PM
MLivereported that people inside the home were handcuffed and moved to the porch outside before being released about 15 minutes later.
The pro-Palestine advocacy group TAHRIR Coalition rallied supporters to two of the homes. Video posted on YouTube shows members of a crowd that gathered outside the Ypsilanti house taunting the agents as they came in and out of the home.
According toDrop Site News, Ann Arbor police said that the investigation involves "reported crimes" committed in the city and other jurisdictions.
An FBI spokesperson confirmed bureau agents took part in the raids, which he described vaguely as "law enforcement activities."
Danny Wimmer, a spokesperson for Democratic Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, who is Jewish, told the Detroit Free Press that the raids "were not related to protest activity on the campus of the University of Michigan," but were "in furtherance of our investigation into multijurisdictional acts of vandalism."
"There is no immigration enforcement angle to the execution of these search warrants," Wimmer added.
However, Liz Jacob, an attorney with the Sugar Law Center in Detroit, noted that "everyone who was raided has taken part in protest and has some relationship to the University of Michigan."
"We are totally convinced that, but for their viewpoints, these students would not have been targeted," Jacob added.
Jacob said seven people were targeted in Wednesday's raids. No arrests were made. The attorney also noted that the warrants were signed by Judge Michelle Friedman Appel, whose jurisdiction includes Huntington Woods, where vandals painted graffiti and inflicted other damage at the home of University of Michigan Regent Jordan Acker while the Jewish man and his family slept inside last December.
Last month, vandals also damaged the Ann Arbor home of Provost Laurie McCauley.
The Graduate Employees' Organization, a union affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers, said one of its members was detained during Wednesday's raids.
"We strongly condemn the actions taken today and all past and present repression of political activism," the group said. "We urge University of Michigan administrators, the regents of the University of Michigan, and Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel to end their campaign against students and stop putting graduate workers in harm's way."
Dawud Walid, the Michigan director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), said in a statement that "we call into question the aggressive nature of this morning's raids of activists' homes, which follows the recent misuse of prosecutorial power in Michigan and throughout our country against pro-Palestinian activists."
"In any other context, such minor infractions would be handled by local law enforcement or referred to local, elected prosecutors—not escalated to federal intervention," Walid added. "This disproportionate response further fuels the perception that Muslim and Arab students, and those who stand in solidarity with them, are being treated overly hostile by law enforcement compared to those who commit harm toward American Muslims."
According to CAIR:
This recent escalation comes on the heels of prior arrests and charges brought by the Michigan attorney general's office against University of Michigan student protesters for minor, nonviolent infractions—including misdemeanor trespassing—during peaceful demonstrations advocating for Palestinian human rights, an end to the genocide in Gaza, and for the University of Michigan to divest from companies complicit in the occupation and violence.
After Nessel announced criminal charges—some of them felonies—for 11 University of Michigan Palestine defenders last September, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), the only Palestinian American member of Congress, said the attorney general was "going to set a precedent, and it's unfortunate that a Democrat made that move."
"We've had the right to dissent, the right to protest. We've done it for climate, the immigrant rights movement, for Black lives, and even around issues of injustice among water shutoffs," Tlaib said. "But it seems that the attorney general decided if the issue was Palestine, she was going to treat it differently, and that alone speaks volumes about possible biases within the agency she runs."
At the federal level, the Trump administration has been arresting and initiating deportation proceedings against international students who have taken part in pro-Palestine campus protests. Although the government admits the targeted individuals have committed no crimes, immigration law allows the removal of foreign nationals deemed detrimental to U.S. foreign policy objectives.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Abrego Garcia Family Flees to Safe House After Trump DHS Posts Home Address on Social Media
"The Trump administration doxxed an American citizen, endangering her and her children. This is completely unacceptable and flat-out wrong."
Apr 23, 2025
The Trump administration has not only sent Kilmar Abrego Garcia to a Salvadoran megaprison due to an "administrative error" and so far refused to comply with a U.S. Supreme Court order to facilitate his return to the United States, but also shared on social media the home address of his family in Maryland, forcing them to relocate.
The news that Abrego Garcia's wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, and her children were "moved to a safe house by supporters" after the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt posted to X a 2021 order of protection petition that Vasquez Sura filed but soon abandoned was reported early Tuesday by The Washington Post.
"I don't feel safe when the government posts my address, the house where my family lives, for everyone to see, especially when this case has gone viral and people have all sorts of opinions," said Vasquez Sura. "So, this is definitely a bit terrifying. I'm scared for my kids."
A DHS spokesperson did not respond Monday to a request for a comment about not redacting the family's address, according to the newspaper's lengthy story about Vasquez Sura—who shares a 5-year-old nonverbal, autistic son with Abrego Garcia and has a 9-year-old son and 10-year-old daughter from a previous relationship that was abusive.
On Wednesday, The New Republicpublished a short article highlighting the safe house detail and noting that "the government has not commented on the decision to leave the family's address in the document it posted online," sparking a fresh wave of outrage over the Trump administration endangering the family.
He was "mistakenly" deported to prison camp, and it was just a "slip-up" that they then posted his wife's address. Bullshit. If these are all accidents, who's getting fired?
[image or embed]
— Ezra Levin (@ezralevin.bsky.social) April 23, 2025 at 12:29 PM
"The Trump administration doxxed an American citizen, endangering her and her children," MSNBC contributor Rotimi Adeoye wrote on X Wednesday. "This is completely unacceptable and flat-out wrong."
Several others responded on the social media platform Bluesky.
"These fascists didn't stop at abducting Abrego Garcia, they've now doxxed his wife, forcing her into hiding," said Dean Preston, the leader of a renters' rights organization. "The Trump administration is terrorizing this family. Speak up, show up, resist."
Jonathan Cohn, political director for the group Progressive Mass, similarly declared, "The Trump administration is terrorizing this woman."
Katherine Hawkins, senior legal analyst for the Project On Government Oversight's Constitution Project, openly wondered "if publishing Abrego Garcia and his wife's home address violates federal or (particularly) Maryland laws."
"Definitely unconscionable and further demonstration of bad faith/intimidation," Hawkins added.
While Abrego Garcia's family seeks refuge in a U.S. safe house, he remains behind bars in his native El Salvador—despite the Supreme Court order from earlier this month and an immigration judge's 2019 decision that was supposed to prevent his deportation. Multiple congressional Democrats have flown to the country in recent days to support demands for his freedom.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular