North Carolina governor: Attorney general's Jim Crow comparison 'an insult'

North Carolina governor: Attorney general's Jim Crow comparison 'an insult'

Speaking on CNN, embattled North Carolina governor Pat McCrory defended his signing of a controversial law stripping LGBT North Carolinians of protections from discrimination and punishing transgender people who use bathrooms that comport with their gender identity, calling attorney general Loretta Lynch comparison of the law to Jim Crow-era segregation “an insult.”

 North Carolina governor Pat speaks during a news conference in Raleigh, North Carolina. Photograph: Gerry Broome/AP

“It’s an insult, and it’s a political statement instead of a legal statement,” McCrory said. “Whether a boy can go into girls restroom - to correlate that to the civil rights movement - is totally irresponsible for the chief legal officer of the United States of America.”

The attorney general, in announcing a federal lawsuit against North Carolina for violating the rights of public school students in passing the law, had compared the bill to segregation laws that were also once on the books in the state.

“It was not so very long ago that states, including North Carolina, had signs above restrooms, water fountains and on public accommodations keeping people out based upon a distinction without a difference,” Lynch said on Monday. In the suit, Lynch described the North Carolina law as violating Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bans discrimination on the basis of sex in the workplace.

According to McCrory, however, the suit is merely indicative of a left-wing conspiracy. “North Carolina has, for whatever reason, become the target of the left on this issue,” McCrory said. “To have the Justice Department come out with a massive interpretation of the Civil Rights Act for every employer is something that I think needs clarification from the federal courts.”