Asheville council calls for HB2 repeal; considers anti-bias LGBT ordinance

Asheville City Council is calling for the repeal of the state Public Facilities Privacy and Security Act (commonly known as House Bill 2 or just HB2) and is working collaboratively with other local governments and plans to work within the legal system to end discrimination.

In addition, three councilmen are calling for the city to write an LGBT anti-discrimination ordinance now in anticipation of the overturning of a North Carolina law forbidding such local protections.

The trio’s move follows a ruling by a federal appeals court saying a Virginia school board discriminated against a transgender teen by forbidding him from using the boys’ restroom.

Councilmen Cecil Bothwell, Brian Haynes and Keith Young said the city should write a local ordinance modeled after Charlotte’s. That ordinance drew attention for allowing transgender people to choose which bathroom to use and led Republican lawmakers to pass HB2, negating such local ordinances.

In general, the Charlotte ordinance made it illegal for private businesses open to the public, such as hotels, to discriminate based on sexual orientation or gender identity.

“It is our belief that the Asheville City Council should prepare an ordinance modeled on the nondiscriminitory ordinance passed by the Charlotte City Council on Feb. 22,” Bothwell said in a news release sent to the Daily Planet.

“We should be ready to move forward on that (nondisriminatory) promise when the court rules on the North Carolina law.”

Other council members said they supported the idea, although a few questioned the need for the announcement and suggested the council move forward in a more deliberate way.

Council originally had decided against following Charlotte’s lead, saying on March 8 that the city legal staff had advised that Asheville did not need to make a change for something that is not an issue here. The legal staff pointed that Charlotte passed its rule to change a prior ordinance that explicitly left out bathroom choice for transgender people.

However, calls for opposition grew after Republican lawmakers quickly overruled the Charlotte ordinance with what is now internationally known as HB2. Opposition was especially strong in Asheville, which has a large LGBT population and the state’s highest number of same-sex couples per capita, when counted by county.

In other local HB2 developments, the Asheville Area Chamber of Commerce said it expects to take no position on the bill.

“Given that HB2 is a hot topic, I’m sure it will arise” at an early April two-day retreat planned by the chamber, “but we don’t plan to take an official action at the retreat,” chamber Chief Executive Officer Kit Cramer said in early April.

“Given that the bill has already passed, and that there is already rumor of changes, we will monitor the situation when the new legislative session starts at the end of the month” of April, Cramer said.

Meanwhile, some other chambers in North Carolina have taken stances opposing the legislation, including the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Chamber of Commerce, the Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce and the Greater Durham Chamber of Commerce. The legislation was passed by the General Assembly and signed into law by Gov. Pat McCrory on March 23.

McCrory has said some changes are possible in the law, after the General Assembly reconvened on April 25.

Asheville Mayor Esther Manheimer also expressed her opposition to HB2, noting in a statement that “Asheville is a welcoming city that thrives on diversity and equality.”

A multi-day conference schedule in August for the Omni Grove Park Inn in Asheville has been cancelled in response to the passage of the recent state law, HB2, costs Asheville an estimated $1.5 million in lost economic revenue — and that is not counting the amount that would have been paid directly to the historic inn.

HB2, in part, is a North Carolina law that requires transgender people to use a bathroom that corresponds to the gender identification on their birth certificates rather than the gender with which they idenitfy.

The Michigan-based W.K. Kellogg Foundation was scheduled to hold a four-day conference, “Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation Summitt,” at the the Omni, bringing some 500 visitors to Asheville. In Kellogg’s cancellation statement, the foundation said it is disappointed “with North Carolina’s failure to protect all human rights.“

As a result, we are canceling this four-day conference that would have brought over 500 people to North Carolina and generated millions of dollars in economic activity for the state’s economy. The event now will be held in December and in a different state. We will provide additional details about the summit at a later date.” As of late April, more than 100 corporations had criticized the HB2 bill.

Asheville-area conservative political activists Carl Mumpower and Chad Nesbitt are offering a $3,000 reward to anyone who can find a way to sue HB2 opponents who are seeking to reverse the March 23 passage of the state law.

The offer issued April 11 said what it calls an “organized effort to exert financial pressure against our elected officials with the explicite agenda or reversing legislation has the taint of extortion, blackmail, intimidation or other form intentional coercion.”

The pair’s statement seeks “a viable means to bringing civil, criminal, administrative or other form of legal redress again the parties involved in this act of coercion.”