North Carolina Hate Bill #2

North Carolina recently signed a bill into law that prevents cities from passing LGBT non-discrimination ordinances. That's a problem because North Carolina doesn't have any specific statewide protections in place to prevent discrimination towards gay and transgender people. Seeing a gap in protection, the city of Charlotte passed a bill outlawing discrimination towards gay and transgender people.

Not willing to let city laws be out of step with the state, the North Carolina state government passed a bill that overturned the Charlotte non-discrimination law. The bill also mandated that students use bathrooms that correspond to the gender on their birth certificate, and prevented cities from raising their minimum wage, which had nothing to do with anything except that the state house does not appreciate when localities try to enact progressive provisions that are counter to state law.

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Death: Overridden

Today, legislators in Nebraska voted to repeal the death penalty, making them the first conservative state to do so in over 40 years. This marks the end of a long hiatus on the death penalty in Nebraska, with their most recent execution being in 1997.

There are still 30 states that allow the death penalty, even though many, like Nebraska, haven't executed a criminal in years. New Mexico, which outlawed the death penalty in 2009, hadn't executed anyone since 2001, and the only reason the execution went through is that the criminal said he did not want to appeal anymore, and chose to die. He had been on death row since 1986.

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