NC: no protections for same-sex domestic violence victims NC's statute regarding domestic violence

North Carolina: no protections for same-sex domestic violence victims

The state’s statute regarding domestic violence only applies to those whose abusers are ‘of the opposite sex’


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In North Carolina, domestic violence victims only have protection under the law if they are a heterosexual couple. Photograph: Mark Goddard/Getty Images

When Sherry Honeycutt Everett was a litigator in North Carolina, she watched her clients’ faces change as she told them that the laws would protect them less because of their sexual orientation. She was speaking to domestic violence victims, but because they were in same-sex dating relationships, they were not entitled to the protective orders they felt they needed to stay safe. That’s because when it comes to dating relationships, Chapter 50B – North Carolina’s statute regarding domestic violence – only applies to people whose abusers are “persons of the opposite sex”. “Time and time again, it was completely heartbreaking to have the conversation with a person sitting right in front of me and saying, ‘The laws of North Carolina do not include you’,” Honeycutt Everett said.

North Carolina is the last state in the union to take a domestic violence victim’s sexual orientation into account when considering whether he or she can access a protective order. During what advocates called a “sea of change” in the last decade, other states whose laws differentiated between LGBTQ domestic violence victims and others have addressed those differences either in court or through legislation. As the current legal and policy director for the North Carolina Coalition Against Domestic Violence (NCCADV), Honeycutt Everett reached out to agencies around the state late least year to inform the coalition’s legislative agenda for 2019. When advocates responded, the most frequently identified issue they listed was the exclusionary language in Chapter 50B.

In 2017, the supreme court of South Carolina ruled that people in same-sex relationships should be able to access the same protections as everyone else. Also that year, the Louisiana legislature voted to extend domestic violence protections to LGBTQ people. “I think that the fact that a number of states have addressed this problem in their state law is a strong indication that there is broad and growing recognition that gay people deserve protection under the law, just as straight people do,” said North Carolina attorney general Josh Stein. Stein considers his state’s domestic violence statute to be unconstitutional and says it’s time to fix it. When he was a state senator and introduced legislation to remedy Chapter 50B’s language, he said, the bill was never heard in committee or advanced to the floor. “The silence was meaningful,” he said.

For years, North Carolina’s general assembly has supported policies that advocates say discriminate against members of the LGBTQ community. Highlights include a law requiring transgender people to use bathrooms in federal buildings that did not align with their gender identities and a bill that was introduced in 2017 to once again outlaw same-sex marriage. “In North Carolina, it’s not particularly a secret that state lawmakers have not valued the safety of the LGBTQ community,” said Ames Simmons, a policy director at LGBTQ rights group Equality North Carolina.

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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/feb/06/north-carolina-same-sex-domestic-violence-laws