Subject: NC Lawmaker Dismisses Deadline to Change Bathroom Law

A top Republican lawmaker in North Carolina said the state would not be "bullied" by the U.S. Justice Department into meeting a Monday deadline to change a new law regulating which bathrooms transgender people can use.

"We will take no action by Monday," House Speaker Tim Moore told reporters in Raleigh on Thursday, after the federal government told the state that the law enacted in March violated the U.S. Civil Rights Act.

The law requires transgender people to use bathrooms that correspond with the sex on their birth certificate rather than their gender identity.

The Justice Department said in letters to McCrory and other state officials that North Carolina was discriminating against transgender state employees and it had until Monday to say whether it would remedy the violations.

North Carolina is the first U.S. state to pass a law limiting transgender access to restrooms, though Republican legislators in several other states have proposed similar laws, making transgender rights a hot-button social issue and contested legal frontier in this election year.

The Justice Department's challenge is similarly unprecedented, but the agency has intervened on behalf of transgender individuals alleging discrimination before.

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