North Carolina Tries to Halt HB2 Fallout With Terrible 'Hall Pass' Bill

After boycotts, corporate pressure, and a federal lawsuit, North Carolina is finally considering an alternative to the infamous "bathroom bill."

Too bad the so-called "Privacy, Dignity, and Safety For All Act" is almost worse than HB2.

HB2 was passed in less than 12 hours and prevents transgender people in the state from using the bathroom that matches their gender identity.

An early draft of this new bill would allow transgender people to obtain a certificate of sex reassignment from the state's vital records department. This certificate would only be obtained after a notarized statement from a doctor who either performed a transgender person's sex-reassignment surgery or one who has examined the person after the surgery.

Only with this certificate--like some twisted, glorified hall pass--would transgender North Carolinians be allowed to use the bathroom or changing facility of their corresponding gender identity.

Advocacy groups are calling out the compromise bill as an invasion of privacy and even more discriminatory than HB2, because the certificates would be limited to transgender people who have had surgery--a procedure that not all transgender people choose to undertake.

Besides the infantilizing new gender certificates, the bill's early draft also upgrades several crimes--such as peeping--from misdemeanors to felonies if they occur in a bathroom or changing room.

So basically this compromise bill, which state conservatives worked out with the NBA, would let certain transgender people back into bathrooms, with the right documents, but still thinks that criminal activity would increase--despite no documented case of a transgender person harassing anyone in a bathroom.

Talk about two steps back.