The plaintiffs suing the state of North Carolina over House Bill 2 have asked a US District Court for a preliminary injunction stopping the provision of the law regulating bathroom and locker room use in public facilities.

The motion was filed by the national American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of North Carolina and Lambda Legal on Monday.

The motion is seeking a preliminary injunction to keep the state “from enforcing Part I of House Bill 2.” That is the provision that requires transgender individuals to use the bathroom that corresponds with the individual’s birth certificate rather than their gender identity.

The lawsuit was initially filed in late March and additional plaintiffs joined the suit in late April claiming HB2 violates Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 and the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution. The US Department of Justice and the state of North Carolina have filed dueling lawsuits in federal court over the legislation.

Chris Brook is the legal director for the ACLU of North Carolina. He said in a release:

“HB 2 is causing ongoing and serious harm to transgender people in North Carolina and must be put on hold while it is reviewed by the court. The U.S. Justice Department has made it clear that HB 2 violates federal law. Governor McCrory and the North Carolina legislature wrote into state law discrimination against transgender people who just want to be able to use public facilities safely and securely.”

Kyle Palazzolo, staff attorney with Lambda Legal, also released a statement following the motion being filed:

“Each day that transgender North Carolinians are singled out by this harmful law, whether they are at school, at work, or just moving through their daily lives in society is another day the state is causing irreparable harm to an already vulnerable community. As Attorney General Lynch said this week, ‘none of us can stand by when a state enters the business of legislating identity and insists that a person pretend to be something they are not, or invents a problem that doesn’t exist as a pretext for discrimination and harassment,’ and we couldn’t agree more.”

There is no timeline in place for a ruling from the judge in this matter.

The US DOJ has said that it would not withhold federal funding from North Carolina until a conclusion is reached in the pending lawsuits, which could take months or even years to reach a final decision through the federal court system. The DOJ also sent a letter to school districts around the country last Friday telling the schools that Title IX protections extended to allowing transgender students to use the facilities of their choice. UNC System president Margaret Spellings said last week the system could not operate without federal funding.

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