Meet The North Carolina Plaintiffs [VIDEOS]

Yesterday a press conference was held at which the plaintiffs in the federal lawsuit against North Carolina appeared. Watch below. The Associated Press reports:



The plaintiffs are two transgender people, a lesbian law professor, the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina and Equality North Carolina. Defendants include McCrory and the University of North Carolina system, where two of the plaintiffs work and a third attends college. The system’s 17 campuses also must comply with the law for employees and students.

Payton Grey McGarry, a student at UNC-Greensboro, and UNC-Chapel Hill employee Joaquin Carcano were born female and consider themselves male but have not changed their birth certificates. A transgender person could use the bathroom aligned with their gender identity if they changed the biological sex on their certificate, allowed after a sex change.

Carcano used a men’s restroom at work and McGarry used a men’s campus locker room before the law was passed. Now they’ll have to search for bathrooms in other buildings, businesses or elsewhere, the lawsuit says.

“I can put myself through the anxiety and stress of going to a female restroom and risk being physically or verbally or physically assaulted … or I can break the law. It’s an uncomfortable situation, either way,” McGarry said in a conference call.

The lawsuit also alleges the new law violates equal protection provisions and federal Title IX rules, which bars discrimination by the UNC system on the basis of sex, putting at risk billions of dollars in federal funds. Supporters of the law disagree.

MeetNCplaintiffs