The ACC, which is based in Greensboro, has yet to announce moving any of its championship events including the conference football championship and basketball tournament games, out of the state.
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The NCAA joins the National Basketball Association, which moved the 2017 All-Star Game from Charlotte over HB2, which requires people to use public showers and restrooms that correspond with the gender listed on their birth certificate.
“This is just round three or so in the wave of what I would call extortion against the state of North Carolina”, said Lt. Gov. Dan Forest (R).
The NCAA opposed the fact that North Carolina’s state law, the only one of its kind in teh country, overrides local laws addressed at protecting LGBT individuals, and enables government officials to refuse services to the LGBT community.
Five states plus numerous cities prohibit travel to North Carolina for public employees and representatives of public institutions, which could include student-athletes and campus athletics staff. The past six ACC football championship games have taken place in Charlotte, and the next four are scheduled to.
The NCAA’s decision to pull seven championships out of North Carolina ratchets up the pressure on the college sports-crazy state to repeal its law on bathroom use by transgender people.
I do not want men or boys legally to be able to share the same locker rooms or bathrooms with my 16-year-old daughter and her classmates or teammates.
The ACC is also on the clock to make its decision about its football championship game, set to be played in Charlotte on December 3. A spokesman with McCrory’s office couldn’t immediately be reached for comment Monday evening, but a spokeswoman with the state Republican party blasted the NCAA’s decision in a statement, saying it is “so absurd it’s nearly comical”.
“The NCAA Constitution clearly states our values of inclusion and gender equity, along with the membership’s expectation that we as the Board of Governors protect those values for all”, said Susquehanna University President Jay Lemons, vice chair of the Board of Governors and chair of the ad hoc committee on diversity and inclusion.
Speaking Tuesday by phone from his office in Spartanburg, South Carolina, Iamarino said upcoming meetings in October and November could result in the tournament being moved to a site outside of North Carolina.
NCAA President Mark Emmert said in statement Monday night that the governing body will delay announcements on future championship sites until early next year.
The NCAA decision affects seven championship tournaments next year, but the marquee one is the first two rounds of the men’s NCAA basketball tournament that had been scheduled for Greensboro next March.
“I genuinely look forward to the NCAA merging all men’s and women’s teams together as singular, unified, unisex teams”, the state’s Republican party spokesperson, Kami Mueller, said in the statement.
Unlike the recent one-time cancellations by the National Basketball Association and various rock stars, the move by college sports’ governing body could make moderate and conservative voters question whether the price tag for the law has finally become too high.
2016 Division I Women’s Soccer Championship, College Cup (Cary), Dec. 2 and 4.
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The golf championships are not the only event Greenville has lost due to HB2. The soccer, baseball, lacrosse and tennis events taken from Cary will deprive the area of about $2 million, Dupree said.
