ACC adds another reason to repeal HB2

The news wasn’t surprising, but that made it no less significant, no less maddening and no less costly to communities in North Carolina. In what amounts to a downright courageous decision, the Atlantic Coast Conference, headquartered in Greensboro, said it would move its 10 neutral-site championships scheduled in the state for the 2016-17 academic year outside North Carolina. That includes the football championship game, which had found a home in Charlotte – and had brought $32 million in economic impact last year to that city.

Also lost are championships in Cary – which earlier lost NCAA title contests when the national organization pulled out – for women’s soccer and men’s and women’s tennis.

Overall, the loss of the ACC’s business will cost communities millions of dollars and thousands of temporary jobs, and merchants such as hotels will suffer big hits. And this was not an easy decision for the conference, headed by former UNC-Chapel Hill quarterback John Swofford. Its headquarters has long been in Greensboro, and even following expansion, the ACC continues to be identified primarily with North Carolina.

All because of an ill-conceived, foolish law called HB2, which now is known coast to coast as one of the most infamous laws in the country virtually licensing discrimination against members of the LGBT community. The law, passed in retaliation after the Charlotte City Council permitted transgender people to use bathrooms matching their gender identities, says those people must use facilities corresponding to the sex listed on their birth certificates. And it banned local governments from passing anti-discrimination laws of their own protecting gay and lesbian people.

The fallout has been catastrophic financially, with the NBA All-Star Game and $100 million gone from Charlotte, concerts canceled, academic conferences gone, tourism hurt to an as-yet unknown degree and, this week, the loss of NCAA championships and now those of the ACC.

Gov. Pat McCrory, who signed HB2 on the night of its passage, first claimed it wouldn’t make any difference in cities’ ability to enforce anti-discrimination laws, which was wrong, and now says the issue “will be resolved in the near future in the United States court system for not only North Carolina, but the entire nation.”

The governor apparently so fears retribution from his own party, now in control of the General Assembly, that he doesn’t have the gumption to say what needs to be said: Repeal HB2 and let us be done with this foolishness.

This story was originally published September 15, 2016 at 7:05 PM with the headline "ACC adds another reason to repeal HB2."