Minor HB2 changes enough for NCAA and ACC to return events to North Carolina

North Carolina’s 11th-hour revision of the discriminatory North Carolina HB2 law presented a renewed opportunity to bring sporting events and business back to the state. Essentially the only reason the law was actually revised was to comply with a line in the sand drawn by the NCAA and the ACC. It’s now served that purpose.

The NCAA announced championship sites through 2022 on Tuesday, including a handful of events in North Carolina. Among them: the men’s basketball tournament will have a regional site in Greensboro in 2020 and Raleigh in 2021, after games were moved from the state in this year’s Big Dance.

The governing body of college sports previously decided that it would take all pre-scheduled championship events out of the state until at least 2022 if the law was not revised. Although the law was replaced with HB142, this revised one doesn’t exactly repeal HB2 in full.

It makes it so state and local agencies in North Carolina can no longer regulate access to bathrooms or locker rooms, effectively ending the ban on trans people using the bathroom or locker room for their gender identity.

But the deal does not fully repeal the other part of HB2. It does seem to let nondiscrimination laws passed by local governments before HB2 kick back into effect. But it also continues to prohibit local governments from passing nondiscrimination laws until December 1, 2020, so cities like Charlotte over the next three years still won’t be able to pass a new law that bans discrimination against LGBTQ people.

To this end, the ACLU condemned the NCAA’s decision in a statement.

“North Carolina’s new law does nothing to guarantee that LGBT people will be protected from discrimination” said James Esseks, director of the ACLU’s LGBT and HIV Project. “When the NCAA originally withdrew events from North Carolina, they did so because they claimed to care about ‘fairness and inclusion’ for college athletes and fans. It’s a shame to see that those concerns have already fallen by the wayside.”

After the new law passed, the NCAA expressed concerns about it.

While the new law meets the minimal NCAA requirements, the board 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.

The NCAA also added in its position that if there are future events in the state of North Carolina, some of its own non-discriminatory rules will be enacted.

We have been assured by the state that this new law allows the NCAA to enact its inclusive policies by contract with communities, universities, arenas, hotels, and other service providers that are doing business with us, our students, other participants, and fans. Further, outside of bathroom facilities, the new law 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.

The NCAA added that after a “reluctant” vote allowing consideration of championship bids in North Carolina, the NCAA championships that had been previously given to the state for 2017-18 will remain there.

The board, however, directs that any site awarded a championship event in North Carolina or elsewhere be required to submit additional documentation demonstrating how student-athletes and fans will be protected from discrimination.

The ACC also had taken away its championship events until further notice, including the ACC’s football championship game (the men’s basketball tournament was already scheduled to be in Brooklyn this year and next year). The conference has decided on the same thing the NCAA did.

The football championship will return to Charlotte and the conference has extended the agreement and will now host the game there through 2020. The men’s basketball tournament will return to the state in 2019 and 2020. The conference has also extended its agreement with its baseball tournament to be held in Charlotte through 2019.

The NCAA doesn’t have jurisdiction over where the ACC hosts its conference title games, so the conference will have to make its own decision moving forward. A couple of state representatives are threatening the ACC over any future boycotting of the state, but that bill doesn’t make much sense.