NCAA Removes Championship Events From North Carolina Due To Anti-LGBT Laws (UPDATE)

The NCAA announced tonight that it was removing seven championship events from the state of North Carolina during the 2016-17 school year, mostly in response to the state’s passage last spring of House Bill 2, an anti-LGBT “Bathroom Bill.” The NCAA Board of Governors removed the events because of four main factors:

North Carolina laws invalidate any local law that treats sexual orientation as a protected class or has a purpose to prevent discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender individuals.

North Carolina has the only statewide law that makes it unlawful to use a restroom different from the gender on one’s birth certificate, regardless of gender identity.

North Carolina law provides legal protections for 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. These states are New York, Minnesota, Washington, Vermont and Connecticut.

And the seven removed championship events are as follows:

2016 Division I Women’s Soccer Championship, College Cup (Cary), Dec. 2 and 4.

2016 Division III Men’s and Women’s Soccer Championships (Greensboro), Dec. 2 and 3.

2017 Division I Men’s Basketball Championship, first/second rounds (Greensboro), March 17 and 19.

2017 Division I Women’s Golf Championships, regional (Greenville), May 8-10.

2017 Division III Men’s and Women’s Tennis Championships (Cary), May 22-27.

2017 Division I Women’s Lacrosse Championship (Cary), May 26 and 28.

2017 Division II Baseball Championship (Cary), May 27-June 3.

These are not the first sporting events North Carolina will lose because of the passage of HB2. In July the NBA pulled next year’s All-Star Game from Charlotte, and November’s Duke-Albany basketball game was cancelled due to a New York state policy banning certain types of travel to North Carolina.

Just a month after its passage, the best estimates were that HB2 had already cost the state around $80 million. In the last five months, that amount has certainly skyrocketed.

Update (9:43 p.m.): The North Carolina GOP has released a truly insane statement in response to the NCAA.

In case you were wondering whether the statement is real: