Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced today that the Department of Justice would be moving forward with a lawsuit against the state of North Carolina and the University of North Carolina about House Bill 2, a bill requires transgender individuals to use the bathrooms that correspond with the biological sex on their birth certificate.

Lynch called the bill "state-sponsored discrimination against transgender individuals.”

The action comes, Lynch says, after the DOJ alerted North Carolina governor Pat McCrory that the bill violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. The U.S. Justice Department sent a letter last week giving the state until the end of the day Monday to respond. McCrory announced Monday morning that North Carolina is choosing instead to file suit.
Lynch underscored that the DOJ could opt to stop federal funding to the North Carolina Department of Public Safety and the University of North Carolina.

She connected the bill to the ongoing civil rights struggles for Black Americans and the fight for gay marriage.

"This is about the dignity and respect that we accord our fellow citizens, and the laws that we as a people and as a country have enacted to protect them, " she said at a press conference.

Watch  her remarks below

Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Staceyann Chin is a performance poet, radical activist, and super mom. When she was 24, Chin relocated to the United States from Jamaica in an effort to experience acceptance as a lesbian, which she wasn’t able to find at home. In the U.S., she faced the complicated intersections of being Black and lesbian. She talks about that and more in the video below.

"When you went home and made love to your woman that night, did it feel like two labelless bodies, two humans, free of everything except for their American[ness]?"

NBCBLK, NBC's online space that focuses on the stories, news, and culture of the contemporary Black experience in America, has created a video series titled #blkOUT, which documents the stories and issues of queer and trans Black people today. In the following video, three couples open up about their relationships and the revolutionary beauty of being in love with and/or as a trans person.