Article snippet: The compromise deal, titled HB142, ends near-term economic threats to the state’s business groups by sunsetting the state’s sole authority to decide who is male and who is female in December 2020, just after the next gubernatorial election. After that date, cities and counties will regain the power to write new legal rights for gays and for “transgender” people who want to live as members of the opposite sex, ensuring renewed political fights over the role of the “gender,” and over distinctions between the male and female sexes. But the state will keep sole control of privacy rules for men’s and women’s use of public restrooms and shower rooms unless judges decide to create new rights for people who want to live as members of the opposite sex. Also, the state preserves its sole authority over the process by which people can formally change their legal sex. That is a political defeat for the gay groups and the progressives in Charlotte who ignited the “transgender bathroom” fight in February 2016 by erasing any legal distinction between men and women in public bathrooms. They erased the distinctions by declaring that men who merely say they are “transgender women” could use women’s public bathrooms and shower rooms, and effectively eliminated women-only bathrooms in the city. In March 2016, conservatives defeated the Charlotteville challenge by passing HB2, titled the “Public Facilities Privacy & Security Act.” The popular law limited cities’ ability to impose... Link to the full article to read more