RALEIGH, N.C. -- North Carolina's prized public universities risk losing more than $1.4 billion in federal funds as state leaders defend a new law limiting the rights of gay, bisexual and transgender people.
The U.S. Justice Department is calling on Republicans who run the Legislature to reverse the law, and the department wants an answer by the end of business on Monday.
North Carolina House Speaker Tim Moore said that's not going to happen.
"We will take no action by Monday," Moore told reporters Thursday. "That deadline will come and go. We don't ever want to lose any money, but we're not going to get bullied by [President Barack Obama's] administration to take action prior to Monday's date. That's not how this works."
Democrats in the Legislature said the department's order gives plenty of time and should be addressed now.
"[House Bill 2] became law in less than 12 hours," North Carolina state Rep. Cecil Brockman, a Democrat, said in a tweet. "Five days should be more than enough time to decide how to clean up after it."
The Monday deadline was set in letters this week to University of North Carolina leaders, Gov. Pat McCrory and the state's public safety agency, warning that the law violates civil-rights protections against sex discrimination in education and employment.
If the department follows through on its enforcement threat, tens of thousands of students also could lose around $800 million in federally backed loans that cannot be borrowed to attend institutions that violate Title IX of the federal Civil Rights Act, university spokesman Joni Worthington said Thursday. The 17-university North Carolina system includes the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University as well several historically black colleges.
"It's a very big stick," said Katharine Bartlett, the former law school dean at nearby Duke University. "The federal government is giving funds under certain conditions."
The North Carolina law requires transgender people to use bathrooms and locker rooms conforming with their birth certificates, rather than their gender identity, and leaves gays, bisexuals and transgender people out of a statewide anti-discrimination code that also bars local governments from providing additional protections.
While the Education Department has withheld federal funds because of Title IX violations, in the past decade the agency has reached settlements instead, spokesman Dorie Nolt said in an email.
"It's not really in anybody's interest that North Carolina loses," Bartlett said. "Who loses from that? All the children and young adults involved in the education system of North Carolina. A lot of people get hurt."
White House spokesman Josh Earnest distanced Obama from the order in his press briefing Thursday afternoon. "These kinds of enforcement actions are made independent of any sort of political interference or direction from the White House," Earnest said. "Those are decisions that are made entirely by attorneys at the Department of Justice."
The Justice Department letters cited last month's federal appellate ruling protecting a Virginia high school student's right to use bathrooms aligned with his new gender identity, which also applies to North Carolina and other states in the 4th Circuit.
A similar case in suburban Chicago was settled after the Education Department threatened the loss of millions of dollars in federal funding, but a group of parents in that district in Palatine, Ill., sued Wednesday to challenge the Obama administration's interpretation of Title IX to include gender identity.
This interpretation is "just beginning to be tested in court," said John Dinan, who teaches about state-federal relations at Wake Forest University.
The conservative legal group that filed the Illinois lawsuit says the Obama administration's position is flawed.
"Title IX is very clear in its plain language that schools can maintain restrooms and locker rooms based on biological sex because this is the only logical way to protect the rights of all students," said Kelly Fiedorek, a lawyer with Alliance Defending Freedom. What the federal agencies are "trying to say is that sex should be interpreted to include gender identity, which is very fluid."
Also Thursday, one of the primary backers of House Bill 2 -- the Christian Action League of North Carolina -- called on state leaders to fight the federal action.
"At the hands of his henchmen in the U.S. Department of Justice, King Obama has delivered his message of intimidation to the state of North Carolina," executive director Mark Creech said on Facebook. "The Great Pontiff of Political Correctness holds the educational futures of our state's children hostage, while dangling the money bags of federal funds over their heads, demanding in exchange North Carolina bow to the madness of obliterating male and female distinctives."
Information for this article was contributed by Colin Campbell of The News & Observer.
A Section on 05/06/2016