RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — North Carolina Democratic Gov. Josh Stein vetoed on Thursday three anti-DEI bills and another measure that in part would target transgender rights. His actions set up more showdowns with Republican lawmakers who pitch the legislation as doing away with structured racial bias in government and public education, protecting women and empowering parents.
Stein criticized the Republican-controlled legislature for focusing on these measures while they've yet to enact a budget for the fiscal year that started this week. Instead, Stein said in a news release, it “wants to distract us by stoking culture wars that further divide us. These mean-spirited bills would marginalize vulnerable people and also undermine the quality of public services and public education.”
The measures cutting or eliminating diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in state and local governments, K-12 public schools and the university system have been a major priority for GOP lawmakers. They argue the programs targeted have overemphasized identity to the detriment of merit and societal unity.
The other vetoed bill initially ran as a bipartisan measure curbing sexual exploitation of women and minors by implementing age verification and consent requirements for people who appear on pornography websites. But the final measure was loaded with several contentious provisions. One would prevent state-funded gender transition procedures or gender-affirming hormone therapy for prisoners. It also affirms the recognition of two sexes and requires the state to officially attach a transgender person’s new birth certificate to their old one if they change their sex assigned at birth.
The bills align with President Donald Trump’s agenda to dismantle DEI practices and press against transgender rights. The legislation is now back at the General Assembly, which could return later this month to attempt veto overrides. Republicans are one House seat short of a veto-proof majority. No Democrats voted for the final three anti-DEI measures.
However, one House Democrat did vote for the other vetoed bill. By vetoing that measure, House Speaker Destin Hall said in a release, Stein “has sided with radical activists over the overwhelming majority of North Carolinians who believe in parental rights, biological reality, and protecting women and children.” The bill also would order school districts to adopt policies so parents can ask that their child be excused from activities or readings that would "impose a substantial burden on the student’s religious beliefs.”
Stein said in a veto message that he strongly supported the anti-sexual exploitation provisions in the bill, but the final measure went too far. “My faith teaches me that we are all children of God no matter our differences and that it is wrong to target vulnerable people, as this bill does," he added.
As for the anti-DEI measures, one bill would ban training, staff positions and hiring decisions that incorporate DEI in state agencies. The legislation also would outlaw those agencies or local governments from using state funds for DEI programs. Workers who violate the law could face civil penalties. The two other bills would bar “divisive concepts” and “discriminatory practices” across public education statewide.
A Stein veto message said the bill addressing governments in part “is riddled with vague definitions yet imposes extreme penalties for unknowable violations.” As for the education measures, Stein wrote, “we should not whitewash history” and “should ensure our students learn from diverse perspectives and form their own opinions.”
But Senate leader Phil Berger said on the social platform X the governor is “choosing to ignore the clear will of the people who are tired of politically correct nonsense” by refusing to end DEI programs.
Stein has now vetoed 11 measures since taking office in January — all of them in the past two weeks.
Of the eight bills Stein signed Thursday, one will block certain abuse and neglect charges for parents or caregivers raising transgender children “consistent with the juvenile’s biological sex.” The bill also says that adoption agencies can't be permitted to deny someone from adopting a child because of their unwillingness to allow the child to transition.
Bill sponsors said the provisions were needed to allow parents and guardians to raise children in line with their family values. But opponents said the measure would harm transgender children and intrude in family matters governed by other laws. Nine House Democrats voted for the final bill.
Asked why Stein signed the bill, spokesperson Kate Frauenfelder said, “Parents have the right to raise their kids how they think is best for them, but of course, child abuse will never be tolerated." Stein remains confident that health and social services offices “will continue to find the best placements for kids,” she added.
FILE - North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein speaks at a campaign event for Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris in Charlotte, N.C., Sept. 12, 2024. (AP Photo/Nell Redmond, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Becky Pepper-Jackson finished third in the discus throw in West Virginia last year though she was in just her first year of high school. Now a 15-year-old sophomore, Pepper-Jackson is aware that her upcoming season could be her last.
West Virginia has banned transgender girls like Pepper-Jackson from competing in girls and women's sports, and is among the more than two dozen states with similar laws. Though the West Virginia law has been blocked by lower courts, the outcome could be different at the conservative-dominated Supreme Court, which has allowed multiple restrictions on transgender people to be enforced in the past year.
The justices are hearing arguments Tuesday in two cases over whether the sports bans violate the Constitution or the landmark federal law known as Title IX that prohibits sex discrimination in education. The second case comes from Idaho, where college student Lindsay Hecox challenged that state's law.
Decisions are expected by early summer.
President Donald Trump's Republican administration has targeted transgender Americans from the first day of his second term, including ousting transgender people from the military and declaring that gender is immutable and determined at birth.
Pepper-Jackson has become the face of the nationwide battle over the participation of transgender girls in athletics that has played out at both the state and federal levels as Republicans have leveraged the issue as a fight for athletic fairness for women and girls.
“I think it’s something that needs to be done,” Pepper-Jackson said in an interview with The Associated Press that was conducted over Zoom. “It’s something I’m here to do because ... this is important to me. I know it’s important to other people. So, like, I’m here for it.”
She sat alongside her mother, Heather Jackson, on a sofa in their home just outside Bridgeport, a rural West Virginia community about 40 miles southwest of Morgantown, to talk about a legal fight that began when she was a middle schooler who finished near the back of the pack in cross-country races.
Pepper-Jackson has grown into a competitive discus and shot put thrower. In addition to the bronze medal in the discus, she finished eighth among shot putters.
She attributes her success to hard work, practicing at school and in her backyard, and lifting weights. Pepper-Jackson has been taking puberty-blocking medication and has publicly identified as a girl since she was in the third grade, though the Supreme Court's decision in June upholding state bans on gender-affirming medical treatment for minors has forced her to go out of state for care.
Her very improvement as an athlete has been cited as a reason she should not be allowed to compete against girls.
“There are immutable physical and biological characteristic differences between men and women that make men bigger, stronger, and faster than women. And if we allow biological males to play sports against biological females, those differences will erode the ability and the places for women in these sports which we have fought so hard for over the last 50 years,” West Virginia's attorney general, JB McCuskey, said in an AP interview. McCuskey said he is not aware of any other transgender athlete in the state who has competed or is trying to compete in girls or women’s sports.
Despite the small numbers of transgender athletes, the issue has taken on outsize importance. The NCAA and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committees banned transgender women from women's sports after Trump signed an executive order aimed at barring their participation.
The public generally is supportive of the limits. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in October 2025 found that about 6 in 10 U.S. adults “strongly” or “somewhat” favored requiring transgender children and teenagers to only compete on sports teams that match the sex they were assigned at birth, not the gender they identify with, while about 2 in 10 were “strongly” or “somewhat” opposed and about one-quarter did not have an opinion.
About 2.1 million adults, or 0.8%, and 724,000 people age 13 to 17, or 3.3%, identify as transgender in the U.S., according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.
Those allied with the administration on the issue paint it in broader terms than just sports, pointing to state laws, Trump administration policies and court rulings against transgender people.
"I think there are cultural, political, legal headwinds all supporting this notion that it’s just a lie that a man can be a woman," said John Bursch, a lawyer with the conservative Christian law firm Alliance Defending Freedom that has led the legal campaign against transgender people. “And if we want a society that respects women and girls, then we need to come to terms with that truth. And the sooner that we do that, the better it will be for women everywhere, whether that be in high school sports teams, high school locker rooms and showers, abused women’s shelters, women’s prisons.”
But Heather Jackson offered different terms to describe the effort to keep her daughter off West Virginia's playing fields.
“Hatred. It’s nothing but hatred,” she said. "This community is the community du jour. We have a long history of isolating marginalized parts of the community.”
Pepper-Jackson has seen some of the uglier side of the debate on display, including when a competitor wore a T-shirt at the championship meet that said, “Men Don't Belong in Women's Sports.”
“I wish these people would educate themselves. Just so they would know that I’m just there to have a good time. That’s it. But it just, it hurts sometimes, like, it gets to me sometimes, but I try to brush it off,” she said.
One schoolmate, identified as A.C. in court papers, said Pepper-Jackson has herself used graphic language in sexually bullying her teammates.
Asked whether she said any of what is alleged, Pepper-Jackson said, “I did not. And the school ruled that there was no evidence to prove that it was true.”
The legal fight will turn on whether the Constitution's equal protection clause or the Title IX anti-discrimination law protects transgender people.
The court ruled in 2020 that workplace discrimination against transgender people is sex discrimination, but refused to extend the logic of that decision to the case over health care for transgender minors.
The court has been deluged by dueling legal briefs from Republican- and Democratic-led states, members of Congress, athletes, doctors, scientists and scholars.
The outcome also could influence separate legal efforts seeking to bar transgender athletes in states that have continued to allow them to compete.
If Pepper-Jackson is forced to stop competing, she said she will still be able to lift weights and continue playing trumpet in the school concert and jazz bands.
“It will hurt a lot, and I know it will, but that’s what I’ll have to do,” she said.
Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Becky Pepper-Jackson poses for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
The Supreme Court stands is Washington, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
FILE - Protestors hold signs during a rally at the state capitol in Charleston, W.Va., on March 9, 2023. (AP Photo/Chris Jackson, file)
