NC Family Staff | August 16, 2023 | SHARE: 
This evening, the North Carolina General Assembly voted to override Governor Cooper’s vetoes of six bills. These bills include SB 49—Parents’ Bill of Rights, HB 574—Fairness in Women’s Sports Act, and HB 808—Gender Transition/Minors, each of which will significantly help children grow up in a healthy and safe environment. In addition to this, the General Assembly also overrode Governor Cooper’s vetoes of HB 219—Charter School Omnibus, HB 618—Charter School Review Board, and HB 488—Code Council Reorg. and Var. Code Amend..
The Governor’s veto of Senate Bill 29 was overridden by the State House with a vote of 72-47, and the State Senate with a vote of 27-18. It will help to clarify and codify parental rights as they relate to their child’s healthcare and education. It is designed to foster transparency and a better relationship between parents and their child’s school and healthcare providers, encouraging these parties to work together so the child can thrive.
Contrary to what some have said, this bill does not incite fear or place undue pressure on schools. Instead, it encourages parental involvement in schools, keeps K-4 curriculum free of sex ed and gender ideology, and informs parents if their child requests to be referred to by a different name or pronouns at school. The goal of SB 29 is to involve parents and remove politics. You can learn more about what this bill contains here.
The Governor’s veto of this bill was overridden by a vote of 74-45 in the North Carolina House, and a vote of 27-18 in the North Carolina Senate. Its contents are straightforward: middle school, high school, and collegiate sports teams are to be designated as male, female, or co-ed and participation on sports teams is based on biological sex. Contrary to what some have said, it does not say that children who identify as transgender cannot play on a sports team. The entire point of separating male and female sports teams is that boys and girls, and women and men, are biologically different. Furthermore, as Payton McNabb and Riley Gaines can attest, this bill is needed to protect the fairness and safety of women’s athletics. Riley was forced to share a locker room with a biological male swimmer, and Payton suffered lasting injuries when a transgender-identifying biological male player on the opposing volleyball team spiked a ball that hit her head. This bill will protect both the fairness of sports and the health and safety of athletes.
The Governor’s veto of this bill was overridden in the State House with a vote of 74-45, and in the State Senate with a vote of 27-18. It has three main components. First, it will prevent minors from receiving gender transition procedures including puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and gender-transition surgeries. Second, it would provide broad conscience protections for healthcare practitioners who did not wish to participate in these experimental procedures. Finally, it would prevent state taxpayer dollars from paying for any transgender procedures. These procedures cause a host of medical problems, as North Carolina resident Prisha Mosleycan attest. If minors are not mature enough to drink alcohol, vote, or get a tattoo, they should not be able to get life-altering elective surgeries.
Overriding the vetoes of these three bills is a huge step in continuing to make North Carolina a place where families can thrive. We are so grateful to all of the legislators who championed these bills in the legislature, to our allies at organizations like the NC Values Coalition and Christian Action League of NC who worked incredibly hard on these bills, and to everyone across the state who made the effort to reach out to and encourage their lawmakers to support these incredibly important measures.
