It was never about so-called LGBT “rights”, it was about getting McCrory, led by the White House.
The Charlotte City Council has voted unanimously to repeal the ordinance to override state law. It was done as a deal with McCrory in exchange for a repeal of HB2. You can bet the day after HB2 is repealed, the Charlotte City Council will reinstate their ordinance.
There is a problem with this compromise, though. Governor McCrory has called the Legislature back into special session on Wednesday (Christmas is Sunday). Back when HB2 was being considered, McCrory refused to call the legislature into session. The leaders of the legislature have the power to call themselves into session. McCrory did not write HB2, but he did sign it. If he had vetoed it, he would have been overriden – again.
Nothing has changed – McCrory paid the price for HB2, but he does not control the Legislsture. He can’t bind them to a deal. The legislature could do a number of different things – not show up with a quorum, show up and immediately adjourn, show up and vote down the repeal of HB2. This was not the thing to do as your last act as governor. Cooper can handle it next year.
The special session is just to “discuss” the repeal. If the Legislature does not repeal HB2 by December 31st, the Council repeal of the ordinance vaporizes.
Charlotte City Council is meeting in special session this morning. They are becoming aware that the Legislature is not going to repeal HB2, so probably the city council is going to repeal its repeal, or maybe the legislature demanded more language to prevent Charlotte from undoing their repeal the day after HB2 was undone
http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/article122145494.html
The Legislature is meeting at 10 AM
Republican leaders met Tuesday to decide what to do. It turns out Charlotte only repealed one part of the ordinance, not the entire thing. They were caught trying to pull a fast one. They met again this morning to rework their repeal, but Republicans understand they could unrepeal their ordinance and reinstate it 5 minutes after HB2 was repealed. They are from North Carolina, but they’re not stupid.
Republican Lieutenant Governor Dan Forest (who was re-elected) has officially declared he opposes repeal of HB2. In the event Cooper is kicked out of office, Dan Forest becomes governor. He is from Charlotte, 49 years old and an architect by training.
Republicans have a big enough majority in both houses to impeach Cooper. Bank on it. And that Cooper will file a lawsuit in Federal Court if they do.
The BBC was premature in declaring that HB2 would be repealed. Just one more example of the family of dictators that run England interfering in American Democracy.
Republicans don’t have the votes to repeal HB2. The legislature has recessed. Three Democratic Senators have offered a bill- the Senate is 35-15, and not all Democrats are necessarily going to support it.
They might resume the session, but I doubt it. There is no need to do this today. It can be taken up next year, and then Governor Cooper can take the blame
The legislature adjourned without passing anything
It gets even better. When the House looked unwilling to do anything, the Senate took the lead – the 2016 Senate is 34R-16D.
When it came up to the vote, all 16 Democratic Senators voted against repealing HB2. 16 Republicans joined them. 16 Republicans voted to repeal HB2, so the vote was 32-16
Had that vote passed, there would have been a second vote on how long Charlotte would have to agree to not to reinstate their ordinance. If the Democrats had voted for the repeal, they would have also been voting against Charlotte reapplying their ordinance for at least six months, giving the 2017 legislature a chance to pass an even more anti-Charlotte bill.
Well played, but don’t look for the national and international media to correctly explain that it was the Democrats who voted unanimously to keep HB2 in place.