Gov. Pat McCrory’s office blasts CMS transgender policy as 'breaking state law'

A spokesman for Gov. Pat McCrory on Tuesday blasted Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools for “purposely breaking state law” with a new policy involving transgender students.

On Monday, CMS officials adopted a regulation requiring principals to honor a student’s gender identity in restrooms, locker rooms, yearbooks and graduation ceremonies.

In March, the Republican-controlled North Carolina General Assembly passed House Bill 2, which requires people in government facilities to use the bathroom or locker room of the gender on their birth certificates.

“Instead of providing reasonable accommodations for some students facing unique circumstances, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School System made a radical change to their shower, locker room and restroom policy for all students,” McCrory press secretary Graham Wilson said in a release. “(CMS) should have waited for the courts to make a decision instead of purposely breaking state law.”

The U.S. Justice Department has sued the state over the law, and the state in turn has sued the Justice Department.

Last month the UNC system told a federal court that it also won’t enforce HB2.

That came in a motion asking a federal court to halt civil proceedings against the university system while a higher court decides a separate case on transgender rights from Virginia.

In the Virginia case, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals deferred to the U.S. Department of Education’s position that transgender students should have access to bathrooms that match their gender identities, not their biological sex.

The ruling, however, did not endorse the federal government’s position, which McCrory and other North Carolina officials have described as government “overreach.” The legal battle in now being fought in multiple federal court cases.

In an affidavit in the N.C. case, UNC System President Margaret Spellings wrote wrote that, pending the outcome of the North Carolina case, “I have no intent to exercise my authority to promulgate any guidelines or regulations that require transgender students to use the restrooms consistent with their biological sex.”

Staff writers Ann Doss Helms and Michael Gordon and the Associated Press contributed.

This story was originally published June 21, 2016 at 6:19 PM with the headline "Gov. Pat McCrory’s office blasts CMS transgender policy as 'breaking state law'."