The Latest: LGBT law’s backers seek attorney general records

RALEIGH, N.C. – The Latest on reaction to a North Carolina law that requires transgender people to use public bathrooms conforming to the sex on their birth certificates and restricts protections for LGBT people. (all times local):

1:10 p.m.

Conservative supporters of a North Carolina law that limits protections to LGBT people say they want to know how much communication there was between gay rights groups and Attorney General Roy Cooper.

Cooper refuses to defend the law in court. The North Carolina Values Coalition said Thursday it filed public records requests because it had questions about whether the Democrat’s decision was motivated by his campaign against incumbent Republican Gov. Pat McCrory.

The public records requests came a week after the Human Rights Campaign filed similar demands for documents from McCrory, state House Speaker Tim Moore and Senate leader Phil Berger. Those requests seek any correspondence between the elected leaders, the Values Coalition and the conservative Alliance Defending Freedom.

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10:50 a.m.

Attorneys are adding a transgender high school student to a lawsuit challenging a new North Carolina law just days after a federal appeals court sided with a transgender student in a Virginia case.

The federal lawsuit updated Thursday challenges a North Carolina law limiting some protections for transgender people.

The plaintiffs now include 17-year-old Hunter Schafer, a junior at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts High School in Winston-Salem. She uses the restroom and lives in dorms with girls, but the North Carolina law would require that she use boys’ facilities.

The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond backed a transgender teen’s arguments that a Virginia school board violated federal anti-discrimination rules by forbidding him from using the boys’ restroom. The ruling affects North Carolina.