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Legal View with Ashleigh Banfield

UNC Caught In Middle Of Transgender Law Debate; North Carolina And Justice Department Suing Each Other; Trump Vs. London's Muslim Mayor; London Mayor Rejects Trump's Exemption Offer; "Liberal Media" Label Goes Digital; Ex-Facebook Staffers Say Site Suppresses Conservative News. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired May 10, 2016 - 12:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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[12:33:56] ASHLEIGH BANFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Got a couple of live pictures for you right now. If you look way over on the left hand side of your screen, is that guy looks familiar, he should.

Live from Washington D.C. folks, Senator Marco Rubio making an appearance. This is the conversation extensibly on the Middle East. He's just returned from a fairly lengthy tour of the Middle East and he's going to give his thoughts on the Middle East peace process. The, you know, eradication of ISIS and a couple of other things as well. But and here's the big one, we are expecting him to potentially be commenting on the current campaign, so much to hear from since he stepped down. So we're going to get those comments to you just a moment that they happen.

In the meantime, I do have other news, I want to fit in like North Carolina and the Justice Department and that epic battle that has now developed over transgender rights. And that state so called Bathroom Bill.

There is a major player cut in the middle of this massive fact. And that player stands to lose hundreds of million of dollars in federal funding and it's a college, University of North Carolina.

[12:35:00] The state's pending or the state's public university system is going to defy what the governor of that state has said and what the state legislature has said. And instead, that university told the Department of Justice, told the federal government, "We're with you." But they intend to, "Act in compliance with federal law."

That's a really big deal because that means if they're not in compliance with state law. That's painful. This is a federal versus state law battle that's just exploded. It happened late yesterday when North Carolina's Governor, Pat McCrory and the Attorney General of the United States, Loretta Lynch had dueling new conferences to announce dueling lawsuits.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PAT MCRORY, (R) NORTH CAROLINA: We believe a core rather than a federal agency should tell our state, our nation and employers across the country what the law requires.

LORETTA LYNCH, ATTORNEY GENERAL: They create a state sponsored discrimination against transgender individuals who simply seek to engage in the most private of functions in a place of safety and security. A right taken for granted by most of us.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BANFIELD: So there is definitely a legal view here.

I want to bring in CNN Legal Analyst and Defense Attorney Danny Cevallos and Julie Rendelman, who is a defense attorney and former prosecutor.

OK, you two. Imagine for a moment you're the university watching these two, you know, battle bots going at it and millions of dollars of your funding are at stake at this time, maybe not a surprise that we got the statement from Margaret Spellings she's the University of North Carolina system president. I'm going to read it for you. This is what she said. "We have always worked to make our campus welcome and safe for students and faculty of all backgrounds, beliefs, and identifies. Toward that end, longstanding policy prohibits university personnel from discriminating on the basis of, among other things, gender identity, sex, or sexual orientation."

So Danny, the question I have is, do they still stand to lose the money because they get their money from the state and it's the state that the DOJ is saying you're breaking the rules?

DANNY CEVALLOS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: The lawsuit of federal funding to universities under title IX is often threatened. But to my knowledge it's never actually been done. So while it's a catastrophic event for a university, it's not like we have it because the people it really hurts our students and the citizens and the people who go to UNC.

But UNC is in a real bind because the N.C. and UNC, North Carolina, is the boss of the university.

However, on the other hand, the federal government holds the pursestrings to all this money. So this creates a bit of a supremacy crisis for all public universities. Who truly is their boss? Is it the state that by which they exist or is the federal government that gives them all these money?

Believe me, the outcome of this dispute will affect public universities everywhere, not just in North Carolina.

BANFIELD: So Julie what happens on campus to a student who chooses to use a bathroom that the state says he or she cannot use but the feds say, go ahead and make a choice?

JULIE RENDELMAN, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Again, North Carolina, the university is completely stuck in the middle. And I have to be honest, when it comes to this new law, how is it possibly enforceable? Who's enforcing it? I don't ...

BANFIELD: Campus police?

RENDELMAN: They're going to stand by the door to make sure that ...

BANFIELD: State troopers.

RENDELMAN: It's absolutely, to me, it's absolutely ridiculous. It's not enforceable. It's not necessary. I don't know that there's any reason for it to become law in the first place.

BANFIELD: Except that it's a huge political issue right now. So Danny what I was interested in seeing yesterday when the hit the docket and filed in the state, a judge was assigned, and that happens all the time and when you are interested in finding out what, you know, judges are assigned and what they've done in the past, this judge is Terrance Boyle.

CEVALLOS: Yup.

BANFIELD: And it ain't like Terrance Boyle hasn't had a case in his courtroom before about transgender issues. So what has he done prior to this?

CEVALLOS: I reviewed one of his cases, an opinion where he allowed the plaintiff's transgender discrimination claim to go forward.

Now, that is not exactly on point and it's not definitely an indicator of what this judge will do. But the judge cited the pending legislation, the employment non-discrimination act, which if you compare it to the way the EEOC and other agencies have interpreted Title VII essentially holds a similar view that transgender people, although it's not explicit in Title VII are accorded the same protections as other protected classes. So we have a very strange situation here where we have a federal law that does not in its words include transgender people as protected classes, but a number of judicial decisions and agency decisions saying, "Well, we believe it does," and the federal DOJ now is now saying "Because they say so, it becomes federal law," and the North Carolina state says, "Not so fast."

[12:40:02] BANFIELD: Now, I have to leave it there, unfortunately. But I think this is not the last we're going to hear if it may go all the way to the Supreme Court. We just don't know.

All right, Julie Rendelman thank you. Danny Cevallos, thank you, as well.

Coming up next, Donald Trump in an international dispute now with London's brand new mayor -- London's brand new Muslim mayor, who saw this one coming?

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BANFIELD: Donald Trump is facing an international conflict of sorts. And he's not president. Let's make no mistake. But it all centers on this guy. This is Sadiq Khan. Glad you're meeting him, because this is a man who just made history after being elected London's first Muslim mayor last week, first Muslim mayor of a major western city as well.

[12:45:04] Remember this, Donald Trump, if he's president, he called for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the United States, so what about a big city mayor like Sadiq Khan?

Well, Donald Trump says, he'd be an exception to that rule. He told The New York Times, "I was happy to see that. I think it's a very good thing, and hope he does a very good job because frankly, that would be very, very good."

Well, Mayor Khan doesn't care what he said. In fact he's not interested in being the exception and Mayor Khan is firing back.

CNN's Phil Black is following this story live in London. What is the new London mayor saying about this?

PHIL BLACK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Ashleigh, this all started because Sadiq Khan, not long after taking office said to a journalist that he'd be interested in traveling to the United States to meet with the mayors of big cities there to talk through some of the challenges they shared to swap ideas, policies, that sort of thing. But he followed up by pointing at that he might have to go before January should Donald Trump win the presidency and that policy become law.

Donald Trump replied by saying that the city can and could be the exception. But you're right, Sadiq Khan, isn't interest in that. He said it's not about whether or not he as in Sadiq Khan can visit the United States. It's the policy and the policy is wrong. This was Sadiq Khan talking here in London earlier today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SADIQ KHAN, MAYOR, LONDON: I think Donald Trump has ignorant views about Islam. It's not just about me but the general focus on exception to his rule. But if you're a Muslim from any part of the world, you can't go to the USA.

We showed last Thursday here in London that it's possible to be mainstream Muslim and to be a western, at least compatible with a western way of life. I like to point to Donald Trump is, don't make an exception for me, reconsider your views on Islam.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLACK: Now Sadiq Khan say what he described as Donald Trump's ignorance is making both the United States and the United Kingdom less safe because it is alienating mainstream Muslims and really playing in to the extremist's hands in doing so.

He says that Donald Trump believes that mainstream Muslims and western liberal democratic ideas are not compatible. That he believes that's been proved wrong by the people of London who have elected him and by a pretty big margin to be the political leader of this city, Ashleigh.

BANFIELD: No, I can't imagine what the headlines are screaming on the street corners but I'm more concerned with what the prime minister is saying. Is he weighed in on this yet and said anything or the people of Britain?

BLACK: Well, Donald Trump's Muslim ban idea has been a big talking point here, since he suggested it last year. It was described by Prime Minister David Cameron in parliament as stupid, divisive, and wrong.

And David Cameron has really stood by those comments ever since, although he hasn't repeated the description of it as stupid. It's interesting because once Donald Trump is confirmed as the Republican nominee, it's very likely he will come here to London. It's what nominees do during over the course of the campaign. So they'll get to discuss that face to face. And it's pretty unlikely that they're not going to see eye to eye on that point. Ashleigh?

BANFIELD: Yes, fascinating. It just continues to be fascinating. Phil Black reporting live from London. Thank you for that.

[12:48:25] Coming up next, T.V. networks and the big city newspapers being accused of liberal bias. That's not something new but this may be a first. The liberal media label going digital. But is it true?

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BANFIELD: There has been a constant refrain about the so-called liberal media for years applied to television and to print. But now log on, folks. It is transferring over to the digital world and in this case, Facebook in particular.

An anonymous former Facebook contractor said that he witnessed his colleagues suppressing news about popular conservative topics from the website's trending section. The allegation was published on the technology blog Gizmodo on Monday morning and sure did ignited the debate about whether social media companies are leaning to the left.

CNN Senior Media Correspondent Brian Stelter host of Reliable Sources of joining me live with this story. You got a whole lot of sources inside Facebook and you are not afraid to tap them to get their information. And what they have to say.

BRIAN STELTER, CNN SENIOR MEDIA CORRESPONDENT: This is a complicated story right, because there's no one alleging systemic or institutional bias by all of Facebook, going from the top down from Mark Zuckerberg down but there is the possibility that individuals who run this trending topics box did sometimes tilted in one direction or the other. That certainly is possible even though it goes against Facebook's guidelines.

BANFIELD: And the sources that you spoke to said quite the opposite. What they hearing from the top is not to do this. But they're not suggesting that individual people don't have hearts and souls that bleed themselves into their work.

STELTER: Exactly. Algorithms don't have hearts but humans do, and so even the most of Facebook is run by computer algorithms, like your Facebook news feed, the stories that show on their, it determined by computer algorithms, the trending boxes in the right hand corner of your Facebook home page that's the one that has editors involved. And there's a good reason by the way. There's hopes doesn't spams and then scams on Facebook. And it's good to filter those out. Right now, you need editors to do that. But if those editors are also sometimes choosing liberal stories or refusing conservative leaning stories that's a problem for Facebook, a big perception problem, certainly.

BANFIELD: And this was a contractor who made these allegations but they were backed up by another contractor too who said the same thing.

STELTER: Yeah, that's right two primary sources for the Gizmodo tech blogs reported about this yesterday. And now, just in the past few minutes there's action from the senate. We're hearing from John Thune, the chairman of the Commerce Committee on the Senate side, Republicans from South Dakota, he sent a letter to CEO Mark Zuckerberg asking a lot of questions about this trending topics issue, about this controversy.

We've also seen the Republican National Committee try to gain subscribers to its e-mail list by creating a petition against Facebook here. I just spoke with the Facebook spokesman, they have no comment yet on this GOPs ...

[12:55:02] BANFIELD: What can the government do? I mean honestly, I appreciate that he's curious, but that's a little uncomfortable, a government stepping on a private business network.

STELTER: That's where this gets so interesting because we're talking about Facebook in its role as a publisher. And Facebook doesn't view itself as a news organization like CNN is. But Facebook is taking actions that resemble a news organization. And that's why it's such a mystery because people here at CNN, lots by the newsrooms, we don't know a lot about how Facebook works. It's kind of a black box. It's kind of opaque.

And I think one of the outcomes of the story. This controversy might be that we learn more about how the trending topic system works. But if Facebook is held to the kind of standards that a news organization is, do we want government officials poking around asking questions, that's where it gets really complicated.

BANFIELD: I know how Facebook work. It takes a whole lot of precious time away from the work that we do and our kids too.

All right, Brian Stelter ...

STELTER: More to come on this story.

BANFIELD: Yeah, I want you to find out a little bit more about that John Thune letter, what it said and what Mark Zuckerberg is even going to answer to it.

And thank you so much Brian Stelter.

STELTER: Thanks.

BANFIELD: And thank you for watching, everyone. Stay tuned because Wolf Blitzer starts right after this quick break.

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