North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory (R) said Wednesday that U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s criticisms of a law he signed preventing individuals from using the bathroom that corresponds with their gender identity were an “insult.”
The Justice Department and the state of North Carolina announced Monday that they were taking each other to court over the sweeping anti-LGBT law. At a news conference announcing the DOJ’s lawsuit, Lynch said “state-sponsored discrimination never looks good and never works in hindsight.”
She then compared the legislation to Jim Crow-era laws that once kept black and white people from using the same restrooms or water fountains in North Carolina and other Southern states. McCrory shook his head as CNN played the clip of Lynch’s comments.
“It’s an insult,” McCrory said when asked to respond. “And it’s a political statement instead of a legal statement. That’s an insult toward our state and 10 million people that has no relevance to this issue regarding whether a gendered identity individual or a boy can go into a girl’s restroom. To correlate that to the civil rights marches in the ’50s and ’60s is totally irresponsible of our chief legal officer of the United States of America.”
McCrory went on to say the so-called “bathroom law” was intended to protect peoples’ privacy and equality.
