Orange County joined Chapel Hill, Carrboro and Hillsborough Tuesday night in expanding local anti-discrimination protections to include LGBTQ residents.
On December 1, 2020, a key provision of House Bill 142 expired, restoring the authority of local governments in North Carolina to adopt ordinances protecting LGBTQ residents from discrimination. House Bill 142 was the North Carolina legislation that replaced the anti-LGBTQ House Bill 2 in 2017.
In a coordinated approach, the elected leaders of Orange County and the towns of Carrboro, Chapel Hill, and Hillsborough have taken action now that the ban has expired, adopting new safeguards against LGBTQ discrimination at their respective meetings over the past two weeks.
The comprehensive protections will cover numerous categories, including sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression. The ordinances will also address discrimination in core areas of life, including public spaces like restaurants and stores, as well as employment.
Chair of the Orange County Commissioners, Renee Price said the local jurisdictions began looking forward to this new legislation in October and November of last year.
“I think when you have your eye on justice, the issues never leave,” Price said. “So when we saw the legislation a couple years ago, we knew we didn’t like it then and we weren’t going to like it in the future – so it was just a matter of time to wait until we could reverse some of the actions that had been taken.”
HB 142 had banned local governments from enacting anti-discrimination policies for three years. State lawmakers had passed it in 2017 as a replacement bill to House Bill 2, also called “the bathroom bill,” which in 2016 required residents to use the bathroom in public facilities that matched the gender on their birth certificate.
“It’s something that has never left the conversation because we’re always fighting for justice in some way,” Price said.
Orange County’s new policy protects residents from discrimination based on age, race, ethnicity, color, national origin, religion, creed, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, marital status, familial status, source of income, disability, political affiliation and veteran status.
“It’s tremendously exciting and significant,” Dorosin said. “The fight over HB2, which really was a statewide struggle, ended with this compromise that repealed the worst of HB2 but then put this moratorium in place – HB 142.”
On Monday January 11, the Town of Hillsborough was the first to unanimously pass an ordinance protecting its LGBTQ residents from discrimination. The towns of Chapel Hill and Carrboro followed suit later that week.
“It’s exciting to see the towns in Orange County and other communities in North Carolina looking at taking advantage of this opportunity,” Dorosin said.
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