On Wednesday, the North Carolina legislature overrode Governor Roy Cooper's vetoes of three bills. House Bill 808 (full text) (veto message) (override vote) prohibits medical professionals from performing gender transition surgery on minors or prescribing puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones to minors. It also creates a cause of action for damages for minors who suffer physical, psychological, emotional, or physiological harm from such procedures or medication and allows minors to bring such actions up until they are 43 years old or 4 years after discovery of the injury and its cause, whichever is later.
House Bill 574 (full text) (veto message) (override vote) bars transgender women from middle school, high school and college athletic teams. The ban applies to all middle and high schools (specifically including church and religious schools) that are members of an organization that administers interscholastic athletic activities. Private church or religious schools that are not members of such an organization must comply with the ban in any game in which it is playing against a team that is a member. At the college level (public or private) the ban applies to all teams that are part of an intercollegiate athletic program. The law also creates a cause of action for any student who is deprived of an athletic opportunity or who is injured or likely to be injured by a violation of the Act. It also creates a cause of action for any student who is subject to retaliation for reporting a violation or any institution or employee harmed for complying with the law.
Senate Bill 49 (full text) (veto message) (override vote), labeled the "Parents' Bill of Rights", has broad provisions giving parents the right to direct the education, upbringing, moral or religious training and health care decisions of their children. It gives parents the right to seek medical or religious exemptions from immunization requirements and to withhold consent to reproductive health and safety education programs. It gives parents the right to access medical records of their children and to ban biometric scans, DNA storage or certain voice and video recordings of their children. It requires (with law enforcement exceptions) parental notification by the state of any suspected criminal offense against their children. It allows parents to review records of materials their children have borrowed from a school library.
The law includes extensive provisions on parental involvement in their children's public school education. Parents must be given information about a broad range of items relating to student progress, including "the course of study, textbooks, and other supplementary instructional materials for his or her child and the policies for inspection and review of those materials." The law requires procedures to notify parents of student physical and mental health, including advance notification of any name or pronoun changes used for the student.
The law also provides:
Instruction on gender identity, sexual activity, or sexuality shall not be included in the curriculum provided in grades kindergarten through fourth grade, regardless of whether the information is provided by school personnel or third parties.
CNN reports on the new laws.
