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ACLU, Lambda Legal File Brief to Protect All Transgender People Harmed by Discriminatory H.B. 2
Legal Groups Seek Reversal of Lower Court Ruling That Left Most Transgender North Carolinians Vulnerable
RICHMOND, Va.
In a lawsuit challenging the North Carolina law banning transgender people from using restrooms that correspond to their gender identity, LGBT rights groups yesterday asked a federal appeals court to broaden a preliminary injunction in order to protect all transgender people in the state from discrimination.
In August, a district court issued a preliminary injunction preventing the North Carolina university system from enforcing H.B. 2 against the three individual transgender plaintiffs in the lawsuit, Carcano v. McCrory, which is scheduled for trial in May 2017. The advocates also asked the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals to expedite the appeal and schedule oral argument for January.
"Every day that H.B. 2 singles out transgender North Carolinians -- whether at school, at work, or just moving through their daily lives -- is another day that the transgender community is told that they are second class," said Chris Brook, ACLU of North Carolina legal director. "Though the district court recognized the serious harm to three of our clients at UNC as a result of H.B. 2, that recognition unfortunately didn't extend to the harms that law inflicts on other transgender individuals in public buildings across North Carolina. We hope and expect that the Fourth Circuit will expand this ruling to protect all transgender people."
The appeal brief filed yesterday argues that H.B. 2 violates the Constitution's Equal Protection Clause because it specifically targets transgender people, and that discrimination against transgender people is a form of sex discrimination. While North Carolina has argued that H.B. 2 advances interests in public safety and privacy, ACLU and Lambda Legal argue that these interests, which can be protected in other ways, do not justify the harms H.B. 2 imposes on transgender people and that to restore the status quo, the court must grant a broader preliminary injunction while the case proceeds to trial.
"H.B. 2 makes transgender North Carolinians pariahs in their own state. Courthouses, airports, libraries, public schools, highway rest stops, police departments, state hospitals, and the very halls of government itself are now unsafe for, and unwelcome to, transgender North Carolinians," said Jon W. Davidson, national legal director at Lambda Legal. "Such unequal treatment simply cannot be squared with the Fourteenth Amendment's promise of equality under the law. The Fourth Circuit should order this broader relief, pending trial."
The American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU of North Carolina, Lambda Legal, and the law firm of Jenner & Block are challenging the law in federal court on behalf of four LGBT North Carolinians in addition to members of the ACLU of North Carolina. The lawsuit was filed days after H.B. 2 was passed by the North Carolina General Assembly and signed by Gov. Pat McCrory. In it, the groups argue that H.B. 2 sends a purposeful message that LGBT people are second-class citizens who are undeserving of the privacy, respect, and protections afforded to others, and that transgender individuals are expelled from public life since they are not allowed to use the restrooms and changing facilities that match who they are.
Read the appeals brief: https://www.aclu.org/brief-plaintiffs-appellants
For more on the lawsuit, Carcano v. McCrory: https://www.aclu.org/cases/carcano-et-al-v-mccrory-et-al
This press release can be found here: https://www.aclu.org/news/aclu-lambda-legal-file-brief-protect-all-transgender-people-harmed-discriminatory-hb-2
The American Civil Liberties Union was founded in 1920 and is our nation's guardian of liberty. The ACLU works in the courts, legislatures and communities to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to all people in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States.
(212) 549-2666LATEST NEWS
Nuclear Plants 'Must Never Be Attacked,' Says Watchdog as Iran Reports US-Israeli Strike at Bushehr Facility
The International Atomic Energy Agency warned of "the paramount importance of adhering to the seven pillars for ensuring nuclear safety and security during a conflict."
Apr 04, 2026
The director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency on Saturday demanded "maximum military restraint" from the US and Israel as it confirmed reports that strikes had targeted a location close to Iran's Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant, killing at least one person.
In a statement released via social media, the IAEA relayed a message from Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi, who expressed "deep concern about the reported incident."
Grossi warned that nuclear power plants or nearby areas "must never be attacked, noting that auxiliary site buildings may contain vital safety equipment" and stressed "the paramount importance of adhering to the seven pillars for ensuring nuclear safety and security during a conflict."
The IAEA said the attack near the Bushehr plant, Iran's only operational nuclear power facility, was the fourth such attack since Israel and the US began its invasion of Iran on February 28. The plant lies in a city inhabited by about 250,000 people.
A security staff member was killed by a projectile fragment and a building on the Bushehr site was impacted by shockwaves and fragments. Grossi said that no increase in radiation levels was reported.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi also condemned the Bushehr strike and issued a reminder of the "Western outrage about hostilities near Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine" when Russia attacked the site.
"Israel-US have bombed our Bushehr plant four times now. Radioactive fallout will end life in [Gulf Cooperation Council] capitals, not Tehran. Attacks on our petrochemicals also convey real objectives," said Araghchi.
Al Jazeera reported that at least two petrochemical facilities had been hit by the US and Israel in southern Iran’s Khuzestan province, an energy hub in the country. At least five people were injured in those attacks,
Iranian news agency Mehr reported that the state-run Bandar Imam petrochemical complex, which produces liquefied petroleum gas and chemicals as well as other products, sustained damage.
President Donald Trump said late last month that he would delay any attacks on Iran's energy infrastructure until April 6 and said the delay was "subject to the success of the ongoing meetings and discussions.”
He has threatened to destroy Iran's power plants and other civilian infrastructure if Iranian leaders don't end the blockade on the oil export waterway the Strait of Hormuz, which they began in retaliation for the US-Israeli strikes that started more than a month ago and which has fueled skyrocketing global energy prices.
The threat amounted to Trump warning that he could soon commit a war crime, said international law experts.
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As Trump Pushes 'Polluters First Agenda,' 2027 Budget Blasted as 'Bloody New Deal'
"This proposed budget is exactly what America does NOT need when facing rising energy bills, more frequent extreme weather, and rising insurance rates," said one climate campaigner.
Apr 03, 2026
US President Donald Trump continued his "war on science" on Friday with his budget request for the 2027 fiscal year, which critics have denounced as "grossly irresponsible" for its proposed $1.5 trillion in military spending and "a moral obscenity" because of its cuts to social and scientific programs.
In the lead-up to Trump's request to the Republican-controlled Congress, as he and Israel waged war on Iran, Sean Manning, a Herbert Scoville Jr. Peace Fellow in the Union of Concerned Scientists' Global Security Program, wrote that "if this Bloody New Deal actually passes, it could give unparalleled increases in financial power to defense contractors and support for the political work they already do to influence Congress."
"Sane voices need to act now, building opposition to this unprecedented plan," Manning argued. "Progressives should be unflinching in defining this proposal as a blank check for the same contractors who cannot deliver ships on time, munitions at scale, or clean audits. Pouring funds into a defense sector that has repeatedly failed basic tests of accountability will not miraculously produce innovation."
In addition to railing against the budget for the Pentagon—the world's largest institutional climate polluter—after it was officially released on Friday, progressive voices directed attention to some particular proposed cuts and their consequences.
To fund the Pentagon's massive war-making budget, "the Trump administration is requesting the cancellation of billions of dollars in funds for renewable energy, environmental justice, carbon removal, space science, and climate change education," Emily Gardner reported Friday for Eos, the American Geophysical Union's news magazine.
As Katherine Tsantiris, Ocean Conservancy's director of government relations, pointed out, among the targeted federal agencies is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The proposed cuts, she said, "fly directly in the face of the clear bipartisan support Congress showed earlier this year by protecting funding for this critical agency."
"Slashing NOAA's budget would weaken weather forecasting, disrupt fisheries management, and stall ocean research—putting American lives, livelihoods, and global scientific leadership at risk," Tsantiris continued. "Congress should once again reject these cuts to ensure NOAA has the resources it needs to support our economy, protect our ocean, and keep Americans safe."
Quentin Scott, federal policy director at the Chesapeake Climate Action Network Action Fund, argued that "this proposed budget is exactly what America does NOT need when facing rising energy bills, more frequent extreme weather, and rising insurance rates."
"By gutting funds for climate science and innovation, the budget jeopardizes our ability to understand and respond to the accelerating climate crisis," Scott said. "Defunding climate research at NOAA doesn't make the problem go away—it makes those hazards more dangerous and more expensive. Families across the country are already paying the price through higher utility bills, flooding, and storm damage. This budget would only make those burdens worse."
Big Oil-backed Trump's budget proposal came on the heels of devastating flooding in Hawaii and as high temperatures hit the Western United States. It also followed an annual World Meteorological Organization report on the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency, which last month led UN Secretary-General António Guterres to declare that "every key climate indicator is flashing red."
Devastating.
[image or embed]
— Scott Kardel aka Palomar Skies (@palomarskies.bsky.social) April 3, 2026 at 12:29 PM
Trump also proposed slashing the Environmental Protection Agency's budget—amid calls to oust Administrator Lee Zeldin for "so brazenly" betraying the EPA's core mission to "protect human health and the environment." Trump also proposed cutting the agency's budget. Noting that attack, Climate Action Campaign director Margie Alt described the president's plan as "anything but a serious" one and "a declaration of who this administration is willing to let suffer."
In a nod to some of the rich executives whose campaign cash helped Trump return to power after promising to scrap his predecessor's climate policies and to enact a "drill, baby, drill" agenda, Alt also called it "a reiteration of this president's devotion to fossil fuel interests."
"This budget would slash the EPA budget by 52%, gutting the agency's ability to protect the air our children breathe, the water our families drink, and the communities that already bear the worst of extreme weather and climate change," she said. "It is a deliberately callous choice to remove the protections that keep families safe, healthy, and shielded from the impacts of pollution and climate change."
According to Alt:
This is not just a continuation of last year's rollbacks. It is an escalation of the Trump administration's Polluters First Agenda and their assault on public health safeguards. Since January 2025, among other abuses, this administration has fired 600 National Weather Service staff, proposed eliminating critical climate research institutions, waived mercury pollution standards for 60 dirty power plants, and gutted the Clean Air Act. This budget is the Trump administration's payback for their big oil, coal, and gas friends and contributors. It slashes resources for clean energy, it zeroes out environmental justice, and pushes oil, gas, and coal, at a time when prices for these energy sources are skyrocketing.
Never before have we had an administration that so blatantly treats American lives as expendable, as proven by this budget. Congress must reject this inhumane budget in full. The American people deserve a federal government that protects them, not one that trades their health, their safety, and their futures for big oil, coal, and gas profits.
As Gardner reported, Trump's budget also "proposes consolidating the Endangered Species Act and Marine Mammal Protection Act, but did not provide details outside noting the program would be housed at the Department of the Interior," among other changes and cuts.
Chris Westfall, senior government relations legislative counsel at Defenders of Wildlife, said that "the administration is yet again demanding that an overworked and grossly understaffed federal workforce do more with less. The proposed budget recklessly consolidates US Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries without the needed resources to preserve scientific expertise, opens our lands and waters to extractive industries, and hollows out the already strained workforce that provides crucial conservation work."
"This proposed budget pushes us further in the wrong direction—potentially triggering even more staff layoffs and providing less resources for wildlife conservation, which are pivotal to recovering America's imperiled species," Westfall warned. "Our nation's lands and the wildlife that depend on them for habitat deserve better than to be ignored by agencies that are shells of their former selves."
The president's proposed attack on endangered species came just days after the administration's so-called "God Squad" voted unanimously for an exemption allowing fossil fuel operations in the Gulf of Mexico to ignore policies intended to protect them. In response, Andrew Bowman, president and CEO of Defenders of Wildlife, said that "I cannot stress enough how unprecedented and unlawful this action is."
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Univ. of Washington Removes Mideast Center Director Who Criticized US-Israeli War on Iran
"There’s a chilling effect on not just my academic freedom, but that of my colleagues; anyone who dares to speak out against the war and against aggression," said UW professor Aria Fani.
Apr 03, 2026
The University of Washington has removed a professor from his role as director of its Middle East Center after he criticized the illegal US-Israeli war of choice on Iran and condemned Zionism, the settler-colonial movement for Jewish hegemony in Palestine.
Aria Fani, who will remain an associate professor at UW’s Jackson School of International Studies, told The Seattle Times on Friday that new interim widirector Daniel Hoffman told him last week he was fired from his leadership role at the Middle East Center.
Fani, who was born and raised in Iran and came to the US when he was 18 years old, said he was hired for his research on Iran. However, he told the Times that he now feels "profoundly hurt and betrayed" by his removal.
"There’s a chilling effect on not just my academic freedom, but that of my colleagues; anyone who dares to speak out against the war and against aggression," he said.
In a separate interview Friday with My Northwest, Fani said he was removed "for improper use" of the center's listserv, an email application.
"I sent out two memos about this atrocious war on Iran in which I offered historical analysis that’s lacking in the media,” Fani said. “I was told that my email made ‘certain constituents feel attacked.’ By certain constituents, I assume the university means Zionists who would like to keep bombing every Middle Eastern country and continue dehumanizing their people.”
Last July Fani told the The Daily UW, a student newspaper, that President Donald Trump's militaristic foreign policy—he's bombed 10 countries, more than any other US leader—is not making the world safer.
“If you tell the dozens of children that were killed in Israeli bombardment... in Iran, or the families of the nuclear scientists who were just wiped out, I hardly imagine they would say that the world is a more peaceful place," he said amid the first round of US and Israeli airstrikes on Iran.
Since then, many more Iranian children have been killed by US and Israeli bombing, including more than 100 students who were among around 175 people massacred in the February 28 US cruise missile strike on a girls' school in Minab.
“The [only] peace this secures is for weapons manufacturers, for oil companies, for drone companies," Fani said in an implicit rebuke of Trump's claim to be the "president of peace."
"It secures peace for them, fills their pockets with money, and makes them fully invincible," he added. "It’s creating a class of people that are living [on] an alternate planet."
Fani was a close friend and defender of Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, the 26-year-old Turkish-American UW grad and International Solidarity Movement volunteer who was fatally shot in 2024 while peacefully protesting the expansion of Israel’s illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank. Witnesses said Israeli occupation forces deliberately shot Eygi in the head.
The professor also called Zionism—some of whose founders acknowledged the colonial nature of their endeavor—a "cancerous" ideology.
Fani noted that his removal from his position at the Middle East Center coincided with a recent town hall-style meeting attended by UW President Robert Jones and right-wing media personality Ari Hoffman. According to Fani, Hoffman "specifically asked Jones" about the professor's leadership at the center.
“All we can do is try to remind people of their responsibilities as members of the university community,” Jones said at meeting. “Not trying to tell them that they can’t have a discussion about Palestine or about Israel, but let’s be clear that those discussions need to be had in a way that doesn’t perpetuate an environment where people feel unsafe.”
According to its website, UW's Middle East Center seeks "to strengthen an understanding of the Middle East in all sectors of American society through training and research at the University of Washington, as well as through delivery of outreach programming across the nation."
Fani is one of dozens of US academics who have been fired, had their contracts terminated, lost job offers, or faced other punitive repercussions for advocating Palestinian rights or opposing Israeli policies and practices.
Earlier this week, Shirin Saeidi, who headed the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, was terminated for social media posts deemed supportive of Iran's government, despite the fact that the school's Faculty Committee on Appointment, Promotion, and Tenure ruled unanimously in February that she should return to her position.
Late last month, Texas State University philosophy professor Idris Robinson sued school officials after he was fired for what he says was his 2024 off-campus lecture in North Carolina titled “Strategic Lessons from the Palestinian Resistance."
Israel's conduct in Gaza is the subject of an ongoing International Court of Justice (ICJ) genocide case filed by South Africa and formally supported by nearly 20 nations. The International Criminal Court has also issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza.
The ICJ found in 2024 that Israel's occupation of Palestine is an illegal form of apartheid.
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