More than nine years after North Carolina’s infamous transgender restroom law roiled the state’s economy and temporarily soiled its reputation, a Senate bill filed last week is attempting to resurrect key components.
would only permit the biological sex assigned at birth on driver’s licenses and end the ability to change the sex on a birth record following sex-reassignment surgery.
The bill has Sen. Vickie Sawyer, R-Iredell, as its primary sponsor. It was submitted Tuesday, March 25 — the last filing date in the Senate for most non-budgetary legislation. The committee pathway for the bill has not been established.
Among other sponsors are Republican Sen. Warren Daniel, who represents Burke and McDowell counties, and Sen. Ralph Hise, a Republican who represents several counties, including parts of Caldwell.
When asked for comment, Sawyer deferred to her comments from her podcast “We’re Just Sayin’.”
“I am continuing my service to stand up for young women and women all across North Carolina and allowing them to have some private spaces that will not be invaded by folks who are not women. And that’s just very clearly what it is,” Sawyer said on the show. “And it’s a bill that will say that young women or any woman in K-12 public schools or rape crisis centers or local confinement facilities, domestic violence shelters, detention centers, prisons and jails, that they will not be bunked in college.”
In an email to PFLAG Statesville’s Nancy Davis, Sawyer said the bill is made to protect women. PFLAG is a advocacy organization for LGBTQ+ people and families, friends and allies.
“I am a mother of daughters. I respect an individual’s wishes to identify as an opposite sex, but I do not support them to invading a woman’s territory,” Sawyer said in the email shared with the Record and Landmark.
During the 2023 and 2024 sessions, Sawyer played a lead advocacy role in the Senate for several anti-transgender bills that were enacted into law after Republican supermajorities overrode Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s vetoes.
The foremost was Sawyer shepherding legislation stopping transgender girls from playing girls sports. Sawyer supports girls playing boys’ sports, such as football and baseball, when they don’t have a girls option.
As was the case with House Bill 2, which existed from March 2016 to being partially repealed in March 2017 in a hard-fought bipartisan compromise, the new bill defines its purpose “to provide protections for women against sexual assault, harassment and violence in correctional facilities, juvenile detention facilities, domestic violence centers, (higher-education and public school) dormitories and restrooms.”
Republican legislative leaders have repeatedly invoked President Donald Trump’s influence on national politics, as well as his third win in North Carolina, as the impetus for several cultural-war bills filed this session.
Senate leader Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, told N.C. Health News on Thursday that the legislation has been enacted by several conservative states.
“We’re in a totally different place as far as people’s perceptions of some of those issues today than we were 10 years ago,” Berger said.
“The usual pattern in American politics is for states to serve as policy laboratories and for policies to be introduced and tested at the state level, and then eventually adopted at the federal level if they are seen as working well in the states,” said John Dinan, a Wake Forest University political science professor.
Dinan said SB516 “is one of several bills we have seen this year that reverses the usual pattern.”
“Policies are now being pioneered at the federal level. State legislators in North Carolina, and in some other states, are seeking to advance similar policies at the state level modeled on federal policies.”
SB516 could serve as the first pivotal test of whether House Democrats will band together to defeat a Republican override attempt of a predictable Democratic Gov. John Stein veto. House Republicans are one vote short of a supermajority at full attendance. “Assuming the bill passes, and is vetoed by Gov. Stein, I imagine it will be a test of Democrats’ commitment to upholding his veto,” said Rep. Pricey Harrison, D-Guilford.
“Given the slim margin in the House, every veto will be a test. I believe that House Democrats will stand together.”
What Senate Bill 516 would do
SB516 represents perhaps the epitome of the importing of Trump’s divisive executive orders.
The legislation mirrors the executive order Trump signed on the first day of his second term that the federal government would only recognize two biological sexes.
SB516 would only allow “one designated biological sex at one time” to use a single or multiple occupancy restroom. changing room or sleeping quarters in a state facility with exceptions for members of the same family. Those settings are identified as covered facilities in the bill.
Public schools would not be allowed to permit students to share sleeping quarters with a member of the other biological sex.
SB516 would permit someone who “encounters a person of the opposite biological sex in a covered facility” to sue the group operating the covered facility if the operator permitted the usage by someone of the opposite biological sex, or failed to take reasonable steps to prevent the usage for occurring.
The bill would change state law to only permit male and female biological identifications, such as on birth certificates. The bill would halt the option of someone changing the sex on their birth record following sex-reassignment surgery and treatments.
Meanwhile, the physical description of individuals on their driver’s license would be required to list their sex as it appears on their birth certificate.
“This bill does nothing to protect women,” said Harrison, who has opposed previous Republican anti-transgender bills.
“Instead, it is yet another attack on transgender community members who are just trying to live their lives with the same dignity and right to privacy that each of us expects and deserves.
“North Carolina is facing many challenges, but regulating the use of bathrooms and people’s gender identity on their driver’s license and birth certificates is not one of them.”
2016 HB2 bathroom bill background
During the 12 months-plus that HB2 was state law, there were estimates of more than $630 million in lost economic activity in the state, including Deutsche Bank halting a planned expansion and PayPal pulling a project slated for Charlotte.
There were projections of billions of dollars annually if HB2 had stayed in effect.
Both the NCAA and Atlantic Coast Conference pulled post-season events from the state in demonstrating their support for transgender rights.
Because of the Trump effect, at least 13 conservative states have chosen to risk potential stigma by passing transgender restroom restriction laws.
CNBC has cited the ability of North Carolina elected officials to find bipartisan common ground on economic recruitment efforts and Medicaid expansion as major pluses toward being selected as a top state for the first time in the annual business-climate rankings.
Yet, for all the high individual economic category rankings North Carolina achieved, CNBC continues to cite the legislature’s record on social issues as a concern.
Sen. Jay Chaudhuri, D-Wake, said he is concerned that transgender-focused Republican legislation could derail North Carolina’s economic momentum that has lifted it to several top rankings in business climate studies.
“I believe it is safe to say we have recruited companies and created thousands of jobs because we actually avoided political controversy,” Chaudhuri said during the 2024 transgender legislation debate.
Meanwhile, Republican proponents of the anti-transgender bills dismiss the possibility of an HB2-type backlash. Or, they argue that instead of North Carolina being an outlier, there is plenty of conservative company since at least 20 states have passed similar transgender sports legislation.
Tony Plath, a retired finance professor at UNC Charlotte, said he expects the overall push against North Carolina to be greater in 2025 than in 2016 because of the state’s purple leanings and pro-transgender advocates have become “increasingly emboldened.”
“This time around, in contrast to 2016, the conservatives are likely to fight back, and fight more effectively, even with the potential reputational damage we will likely face ... the business boycotts we might experience ... and the loss of future business prospects and recruiting opportunities.”
LGTBQIA response
IMPAQT GSO, an LGTBQIA advocacy group based in Greensboro, said it “strongly opposes Senate Bill 516.”
“While we fully support efforts to ensure safety and dignity for all people, this legislation does not accomplish that,” said Jessie Taylor, the group’s executive director.
“Instead, it reintroduces many of the same harmful provisions seen in HB2, a policy that caused widespread harm across our state and deeply impacted the LGBTQIA community.”
Taylor said the bill “attempts to narrowly define people based solely on biological sex, disregarding lived experiences, identity and the humanity of transgender and nonbinary individuals.”
“It creates unnecessary and dangerous barriers to accessing public spaces, including restrooms, schools, shelters, and correctional facilities — spaces that should provide safety, not fear. It permits civil action against institutions for simply allowing someone to exist as themselves.
“It places LGBTQIA individuals, particularly trans and nonbinary people, at increased risk for harassment, violence and exclusion.
Taylor said the framing of SB516 as “protection for women misrepresents the reality: transgender women are not a threat, and trans people deserve the same right to safety, privacy and dignity as anyone else.”
“We’re not here to go backward. Our community deserves more than fear-based laws that erase people’s lived realities.”
Changed radically
Some political analysts are surprised that Republican legislative leadership didn’t pursue SB516’s anti-transgender legislation during their supermajority sessions.
Yet, they understand why those leaders feel emboldened to support SB516 given their gerrymandered map advantages led to 2024 general election success.
“Compared with 2016, the political discourse around sexual and gender identity has changed radically,” said John Quinterno, principal with South by North Strategies Ltd., a Chapel Hill research company specializing in economic and social policy.
“Republican candidates at all levels of government enjoyed considerable success in 2024 running on opposition to transgender persons, and on the need to protect biological women from transgender women who were born biologically male in different areas, like athletic competition.”
Quinterno said SB516 expands on the HB2 legislation by providing more detailed definitions of terms related to sex and gender “that would apply throughout the general statutes, and taking a more expansive view of covered facilities.”
“It also allows people who feel like the conditions of the bill have been violated to initiate private civil lawsuits, which is a new development and one that was expressly prohibited in HB2.
“Essentially, the bill would open government agencies to private lawsuits.”
Quinterno said he expects, as do some Republican legislative leaders, that SB516 will face much less opposition from corporations based in North Carolina or considering opening operations in the state.
“I didn’t want to leave unaddressed this notion, this vague threat, that this is the same as HB2, and the business community is going to somehow retaliate against North Carolina,” Paul Newton, R-Wilson, said in 2024.
“I suggest to you many years ago that Michael Jordan had it right when he said that ‘Republicans buy Nikes, too.’”
Newton said to businesses that might be on the fence on the transgender sports bill that “I promise you that whatever business you are in, you’ve got customers on both sides of this issues and we implore you to understand the reasonableness of the position we’re trying to take here.”
Quinterno said that “given the opposition to transgender issues shown by the Trump administration to date and associated changes being implemented at the federal level, many firms are apt to go along to avoid retaliation from governmental agencies in the form of lawsuits and lost contracts.”
“While many firms may not like SB516, they probably will not engage in the same kinds of public boycotts and opposition that happened in 2016 should it become law.”
2026 elections influence?
The decisions being made at the national level are providing some cover for states to pursue these types of issues, said Brandon Lenoir, a professor of political communication and campaigns at High Point University.
“It appears the General Assembly is not worried about the potential fallout from these proposed bills,” Lenoir said.
“HB2 created a lot of backlash and likely cost Gov. (Pat) McCrory reelection. We’ll have to see what happens this time around.”
Lenoir said SB516 “is clearly a test for Gov. Stein and the power of the veto. The fact the Republicans no longer hold a super majority, it appears these bills are destined to fail.”
Yet, Lenoir said that “strategically speaking, taking a hard stand on wedge issues tends to energize your base.”
“There are some voters who feel strongly about these issues. It does, however, also mobilize the opposition.
“The question remains, which party will benefit most from the introduction of these bills?” Lenoir asked.
“We may be far enough away from the next election causing the ensuing debate on the bills to have limited effects on vote choice in the midterms.”