North Carolina’s HB2 Spurs NCLR Regional Convening Location Change

You can now count NCLR as one of the many businesses and organizations protesting North Carolina’s anti-LGBT law known as HB2. This week we announced that NCLR would be canceling its Northeast/Southeast Regional Leadership Convening scheduled for this October in Raleigh. Instead, we’ll be moving our meeting to Miami, a city where no such discrimination has been codified into law.

It is regrettable that Governor Pat McCrory signed legislation that discriminates against transgender Americans and rolls back local-level protections for LGBT residents of the state. The so-called “bathroom bill” effectively takes away the rights of transgender people to use public restrooms consistent with their gender identity. HB2 also supersedes all local ordinances regulating employment, wages, or public accommodations.

“Hispanics know what it is like to be singled out and stripped of our humanity because of who we are or what we look like. And with the wave of anti-immigrant state laws in recent years, the Latino community is all too familiar with legislation that purports to ‘protect’ but, in fact, legalizes discrimination,” said NCLR President and CEO Janet Murguía. “HB2 is a solution in search of a nonexistent problem; it is unnecessary, offensive, and violates not only our rights, but our values as Americans. By taking this action, we extend our support to the efforts of so many in North Carolina and the LGBT, civil rights, and business communities to repeal this egregious law.”