Critics say new law targets LGBT and undermines workplace protections
North Carolina’s new “Public Facilities Privacy & Security Act” will overturn Charlotte’s effort to extend bathroom rights and other protections to LGBT members, prohibit increasing minimum wage or other living wage initiatives, and prevent certain protected groups from filing discriminatory employment lawsuits in state courts. Representative Dan Bishop, who founded the law, stated that the purpose of the law is to correct a change in the state’s public accommodations law that the city of Charlotte should not have made, while clarifying state workplace-discrimination statutes and guarding against “invented classes” that would demand legal protections in the future. Critics of the law argue that forcing individuals to file complaints with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in order to determine whether a lawsuit can be filed in federal court will give employees only six months to file a case in a process described as laborious. The new law may also effect the amount of federal funds that North Carolina receives for higher education.
See "Critics say new law targets LGBT and undermines workplace protections", Michael Gordon, The Miami Herald, March 28, 2016