Last Friday, new legislation was approved by the North Carolina House of Representatives that fails to provide protections for LGBTI students at charter schools run by for-profit management companies, reports NC Policy Watch.
Senate Bill 793 prevents charter schools from discriminating on the basis of “ethnicity, national origin, gender, or disability” but fails to provide specific protections for LGBT students.
The bill, which also allows charter schools to keep employees’ salaries secret, included protections for LGBT students in earlier versions.
Democrat Rep. Marcus Brandon, who is the only openly LGBT member of the North Carolina General Assembly, had argued that the LGBT community is not a protected class in North Carolina. This prompted the need for a previous amendment that drew on language from federal law, which was eventually stripped in a conference committee.
The Senate must act on the bill before it goes to the Governor.
Last month, during a debate on Senate Bill 793, North Carolina Republican Representative Paul Stam compared pedophilia, incest, masochism and other illegal sexual practices with homosexuality.
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