HB2 is gone, but some controversial parts of it still live on

Last year, the North Carolina General Assembly hastily passed HB2, one of the few laws famous enough that it gets mentioned on bumper stickers and protest signs.

The law regulated bathroom access, and it also banned local governments from protecting LGBT people from discrimination within their boundaries, and prevented governments from making local rules raising the minimum wage, requiring paid leave policies and more.

Controversy over the law quickly came to define the 2016 race for governor. Democrat Roy Cooper promised – often, and forcefully – to repeal the law. He won a narrow victory over the Republican incumbent, Pat McCrory.

And after some false starts, the legislature did replace HB2 with a new set of rules on March 30 – signed into law by Cooper that same day.

However, the changes fell short of everything he promised, which was: "to repeal HB2 and restore the worker protections that were taken away by Governor McCrory."

Some of Cooper's supporters were less than pleased.

"Lawmakers and Governor Cooper have failed to resolve the problems with HB2 by doubling down on discrimination," said Chris Sgro, a former Democratic legislator who's the executive director of Equality NC.

Working with Cooper to draft the bill, the Republican-led legislature did technically repeal HB2 – most notably the part of the law that restricted who can use which bathrooms.

But the new law didn't stop there.

It added back HB2's bans on local "worker protections" and other local ordinances, but gave them a convenient expiration date: Dec. 1, 2020, after the next gubernatorial election.

The bill passed with bipartisan support, and also bipartisan opposition. Cooper said he went along with the continued ban on local ordinances because it was the only way that he could get enough Republicans on board to pass the other changes.

"In a perfect world, with a good General Assembly, we would have repealed House Bill 2 fully today and added full statewide protections for LGBT North Carolinians," he said at a news conference. "Unfortunately our supermajority Republican legislature will not pass these protections. But this is an important goal that I will keep fighting for."

But in the meantime, cities and counties remain banned from creating local discrimination protections and from passing rules raising the minimum wage or mandating stricter policies about hours, leave, benefits and other employment issues.

So it's clear that Cooper got some – but not all – of what he promised on HB2. We rate this promise a Compromise. If something changes, we'll update our rating.