Legal experts accused the Obama administration of trying to bully Americans into accepting the demands of the LGBT community concerning the use of public restrooms.
The accusation was hurled after the Department of Justice (DOJ) ordered North Carolina on Wednesday not to implement a newly adopted legislation that protects women and children from being exposed to men in restrooms and locker rooms, claiming that it violates federal law, WND reports.
House Bill 2, the law in question, disallows men who identify as women and vice versa to enter the restroom that correlates with their gender identity.
North Carolina could lose millions of dollars in federal funding if its stands its ground in upholding the law, according to Christian News.
The letter, addressed to North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory and written by DOJ Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Vanita Gupta, claimed that the state's new law violates the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
In the DOJ letter, Gupta wrote: "The State is engaging in a pattern or practice of discrimination against transgender state employees, and both you in your official capacity and the state are engaging in a pattern or practice of resistance to the full enjoyment of Title VII rights by transgender employees of public agencies."
The letter focused on government employees who identify as the opposite gender.
"Access to sex-segregated restrooms and other workplace facilities consistent with gender identity is a term, condition or privilege of employment," Gupta said. "Denying such access to transgender individuals, whose gender identity is different from the gender assigned at birth, while affording it to similarly situated non-transgender employees, violates Title VII."
The cited section of federal law prohibits employers from discriminating against a person because of their gender. The law has generally been considered as applying to discrimination against women in treating females as inferior to males.
The DOJ gave McCrory until Monday next week to advise the federal government that the state will not "comply with or implement" its newly-passed restroom law, and that it will notify state employees that "they are permitted to access bathrooms and other facilities consistent with their gender identity."
Lawyers who have acknowledged expertise on the issue rejected the DOJ's contention that the North Carolina legislation violates federal law.
"North Carolina's bathroom privacy law, HB2, fully complies with federal law," said Kellie Fiedorek, a legal counsel for the powerhouse Alliance Defending Freedom, which specialises in civil and religious rights.
"It's absurd to assert, as the Department of Justice does, that by placing the word 'sex' in federal nondiscrimination laws, Congress intended to force states to open their restrooms to people of the opposite biological sex," Fiedorek said. "Gov. McCrory and the state of North Carolina are fulfilling their duty to protect the privacy rights of their citizens.
"The DOJ should stop bullying North Carolina with falsehoods about what federal law requires," Fiedorek said.
