UNC may be breaking executive order by following HB 2

by Sara Ritsch
Staff Writer

By complying with House Bill 2, University of North Carolina may be violating President Obama’s order to bar federal contractors from engaging in anti-LGBT workplace discrimination.

HB 2 prohibits transgender people in N.C. from using public restrooms that coincide with their gender identity. Last week, UNC President Margaret Spellings declared she would abide by that law.

But Executive Order 13672 says that any federal contractor who entered new agreements to do business of at least $10,000 per year with the U.S. government is subject to these anti-discrimination rules.

According to the Washington Blade, University of North Carolina is a federal contractor.

USApending.gov says that N.C. received more than $2 million in federal contracts between 2008 and 2016. That’s more than $10,000 a year in contracts with the federal government. UNC could be subject to penalties, then, if it discriminates against LGBT workers by complying with HB 2.

If a trans worker at UNC is barred from using the restroom of their gender identity, the Obama administration may have the leeway to investigate the school.

“Executive Order 13672 is an important cornerstone of President Obama’s historic legacy on LGBT equality,” Tico Almeida, president of Freedom to Work, said, according to the Blade.

“Now that the UNC system is perhaps the only federal contractor in the country to affirmatively announce to the public that it discriminates against transgender Americans, the Labor Department has the legal authority to begin an investigation and take enforcement action under President Obama’s LGBT executive order.”

Spellings’ decision to comply with HB 2 – her decision to single out trans students and workers as enemies of the state – now puts UNC at risk of losing all federal funding.

Was it worth it?

The Gayly – 4/12/2016 @ 10:45 a.m. CST