RALEIGH – The Charlotte City Council has passed an ordinance that purports to strip businesses of their rights by requiring them to give special accommodations to individuals based on their self-perceived gender orientation.
The so-called “bathroom ordinance” passed by a vote of 7-4 on Monday evening. Unless the General Assembly intervenes, the ordinance will go into effect on April 1.
As a result, businesses are “prohibited from discriminating based on any protected characteristic.” Those protected characteristics include “marital status, familial status, sexual orientation, and gender identity.”
“The City Council has overstepped its boundaries,” Francis De Luca, president of the Civitas Institute, said. “City Council members do not have the right to create protected classes. This is not a question of whether or not individuals are free to live as they see fit. The fundamental issue is whether municipalities have the power to trample on the rights of business owners by forcing them to accommodate lifestyle choices with which they disagree.”
To interview Francis De Luca, contact Demi Dowdy at 919-834-2099 or demi.dowdy@nccivitas.org.
Founded in 2005, the Civitas Institute is a Raleigh, NC-based, 501(c)(3) nonprofit policy organization committed to creating a North Carolina whose citizens enjoy liberty and prosperity derived from limited government, personal responsibility and civic engagement. To that end, Civitas develops and advocates for conservative policy solutions to improve the lives of all North Carolinians.
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Individual freedom, Liberty, civil rights and human rights trump corporate rights, or should.