RALEIGH, N.C. — A North Carolina state senator fired back at U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch after she compared the state’s bathroom bill to Jim Crow laws and likened it to state-sponsored discrimination.

“Frankly, I find it appalling that someone from North Carolina would work so hard to hurt the state where she’s from,” state Sen. Buck Newton, a Republican, told The Daily Signal in an interview Thursday. “I can’t conceive of a scenario where if I were in her shoes, even if I felt strongly about the policy that she’s trying to pursue, that I would go about it this way.”

Newton called Lynch’s words “extremely detrimental” and said he believes that the Obama administration is being unreasonable in its demands to allow transgender individuals into opposite-sex restrooms, showers, and locker rooms.

“We live in a country where people’s feelings and people’s rights have to be balanced between other people’s feelings and rights,” Newton said.

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