North Carolina Governor and Attorney General accountable to leaders of the NC Congress of Latino Organizations at a public meeting attended by close to 1,000 Latinos

The North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper, and the Attorney General Josh Stein provided an accountability report to close to 1,000 Latinos on the promises made as candidates in 2016 [Article Spanish] before reacting to the NC Congress of Latino Organizations Priority Agenda that was developed with input of over 3,500 Latinos who participated in listening sessions this year.

Governor Roy Cooper and Attorney General Josh Stein announced they kept their promises to:

Governor:

  • Improve access to health care for Latino families by holding insurance companies accountable for delivering culturally and linguistically appropriate services as part of the $30 billion medicaid transformation. 
  • The Governor shared he vetoed harmful legislation that would deputize all Sheriffs across the state to act as ICE agents.

Attorney General:

  • Participated in the successful legal action in defense of DACA
  • Represented hundreds of Latino families living at mobile home parks in negotiations with abusive landlords.

The highlight of the evening was a public pledge made by Governor Roy Cooper to protect essential workers by focusing on social distancing, proper sanitation and other necessary measures in their homes and transportation, in addition to providing testing in migrant agricultural worker camps. Latinos represent 44 percent of all documented cases of Covid-19 in the state. “I am going to prepare an executive order to protect [essential] workers, agricultural workers, workers in meat and poultry processing plants and in other areas, and I am going to be looking for the best way that that order can be applied,” Cooper said.

Other pledges from the Governor and Attorney General to the NC Congress of Latino Organizations include:

  • A promise to fight for funding and prioritize hiring of bilingual counselors, nurses and interpreters at public schools across the state as required by the landmark Leandro Court ruling. 
  • The Attorney General pledged to bring a new challenge to the recent changes the Trump administration made to the Obama-era program that shields certain undocumented immigrants who came to the US as children from deportation. 
  • AG Josh Stein also promised to join legal action by other Attorney General’s across the United States in taking action against public charge rules and arrests of immigrants at courthouses without a warrant/court order.    

 

Other media coverage:

https://www.islandpacket.com/news/state/north-carolina/article245019545.html

https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/nc-politics-in-the-news-august-2020-3-79406/

https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=31ae0510-5bb6-4c8f-a694-e257e25ac07b