RALEIGH, NORTH CAROLINA — In the Tarheel State, Rep. Tom Thompaulsen (R) says he is “livid, incensed, angry, and a little constipated” over the Department of Justice sending a stern warning to the governor and legislators in his state about HB2, the so-called “bathroom” bill that strips LGBT+ people of many legal protections.
“They have no right,” Thompaulsen shouted at a press conference this week, “other than the 10th Amendment’s Supremacy Clause and over 200 years of legal precedent, to do this!”
This week, the Obama Administration’s justice department advised North Carolina that they would be in violating the civil rights of transgender state employees and citizens and that if they did not repeal the law and abandon it, they could face stiff consequences. Some of those consequences include losing hundreds of millions of dollars in federal subsidies for education in North Carolina. “The State is engaging in a pattern or practice of discrimination against transgender state employees,” the DOJ’s letter told Gov. Pat McCrory, “and both you, in your official capacity, and the state are engaging” in the discrimination, the letter posited.
Thompaulsen, a religious conservative, told the press this morning that the justice department needs to get “their big government noses out of our big government bigotry.”
“Look, of course we know that our law flies in the face of the very notion of an unobtrusive government,” Thompaulsen told reporters, “but if we want to vote for laws that make people second-class citizens, that literally make people separate and unequal in the eyes of the law, then what powers do the feds have to stop that?”
Some reporters immediately told Thompaulsen the 10th and 14th amendments generally cover issues of states writing laws that are not applied equally, justly, or fairly.
“Well, for starters,” Thompaulsen said, “I will simply say, ‘states rights’ to you. That should be all I need to say, but I know you high-fallutin’ media types still believe the Supremacy Clause gives the feds the rights to do this. But I ask you this — just because we fought a civil war over these very issues and my side lost, does that mean I’m wrong, really?”
Silence greeted Thompaulsen’s query.
“I’m not denying that this law lets us discriminate against transgenders,” Thompaulsen said, “I’m simply arguing that we have the right to do so because ‘God’ and stuff.” Thompaulsen further argued that “just because the Constitution forbids it, that doesn’t mean we can’t do it” and “as a Republican, I am only concerned with the parts of the Constitution that concern guns, and telling the Feds to eat one because they don’t get to have everything they want.”
Thompaulsen also defended the lawsuits that were surely to come if the state doesn’t ditch HB2.
“Is it fiscally conservative to willingly plunge your state into a costly legal battle over a law you know damn-well isn’t Constitutional,” Rep. Thompaulsen asked, “I’ll let the good people of this great state tell you. But I believe that our Republican voters will once again turn a blind eye to the glaring hypocrisy of this and focus solely on their ignorance-driven delusions of how dangerous LGBT+ people are to the cultural fabric of this great, Christian nation of ours.”
