NCAA Announces North Carolina Scam Claiming HB2 ‘Repealed’ Has Worked

Sad, Stunning, Despicable

The Board of Governors of the NCAA announced Tuesday morning it will allow championship games to be played in North Carolina once again. Last year it had stripped the games from North Carolina over HB2.

Last week, hours after the college sports organizing body’s deadline, North Carolina lawmakers rammed through a bill that partially repeals HB2 while still banning for nearly four years the right of cities and towns to enact nondiscrimination legislation. The “compromise” law makes the state no more safe for transgender people or other minorities than it was before HB2 was enacted.

Yet the NCAA has decided the law is just enough to allow them to operate in the Tar Heel State.

Admitting the “cumulative impact HB2 had on local communities’ ability to ensure a safe, healthy, discrimination-free atmosphere for all those watching and participating in our events” made it necessary for the NCAA to relocate games out of North Carolina, the Board of Governors today knowing those same circumstances still exist, they are willing to return.

The NCAA says it “remains concerned that some may perceive North Carolina’s moratorium against affording opportunities for communities to extend basic civil rights as a signal that discriminatory behavior is permitted and acceptable, which is inconsistent with the NCAA Bylaws.” It should be, and that alone should be sufficient to retain its moratorium on championship games in North Carolina.

Clearly, it isn’t.

“However,” the Board continues, “we recognize the quality championships hosted by the people of North Carolina in years before HB2. And this new law restores the state to that legal landscape: a landscape similar to other jurisdictions presently hosting NCAA championships.”

In other words, “meh.”

They go on to state, stunningly, that “outside of bathroom facilities,” the repeal and replacement of HB2 “allows our campuses to maintain their own policies against discrimination, including protecting LGBTQ rights, and allows cities’ existing nondiscrimination ordinances, including LBGTQ protections, to remain effective.”

In other words, one of the main reasons they initiated a boycott of North Carolina is no longer a consideration.

Any moral high ground the NCAA had won has now been relinquished.

This is a sad, stunning, despicable day.

UPDATE: 
“North Carolina’s new law does nothing to guarantee that LGBT people will be protected from discrimination, and as the NCAA’s own statement acknowledges, the rights of trans student-athletes, coaches, and fans in particular remain in legal limbo,” said James Esseks, director of the ACLU’s LGBT and HIV Project. “This is not an environment that protects people from discrimination.”

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Image by bp6316 via Flickr and a CC license