Big-businesses pressure NC after year-long bill

MARCH MADNESS — Communities continue to remain dis-
tressed as the House Bill 2 repeal makes insignificant impacts for equality. (The Sacramento Bee)

Just over a year ago, North Carolina’s former governor Pat McCrory signed the House Bill 2 that stated transgender people are required to use public bathrooms that match the sex on their birth certificate. This struck opposing controversies, as supporters claimed this bill was supposed to protect privacy rights, while critics claim that this was discrimination to the LGBTQ community.

This led to several businesses and events, such as the NCAA, to withdraw from the state in disagreement. While this bill would result in a large increase of economic pressures predicting a $4 billion loss in businesses over the next years, several believed that North Carolina responded by choosing to alter HB2.

Current governor Roy Cooper challenged this law by placing a repeal. While not necessarily a full repeal, it still holds key features of HB2, such as leaving regulation of bathroom access solely in control of the legislature. Instead this change replaces the current bill with a new policy stating that local governments cannot introduce additional laws to protect the LGBTQ community from discrimination until 2020.

The LGBTQ group claims that this repeal is not actually effective, since the only change introduced is the name of the bill. In addition, the bill still fails to legally protect transgender people from discrimination.

“For over a year now, House Bill 2 has been a dark cloud hanging over our great state. It has stained our reputation. It has discriminated against our people and it has caused great economic harm in many of our communities,” Cooper said.

Because the NCAA has a large impact to North Carolina with hosting the NCAA basketball championships, several claim that this deal was rushed to satisfy the NCAA events. The NCAA had relocated several college athletic championship events for the 2016-2017 season because of HB2. They also predicted that five more years of tournaments were at stake while HB2 remains.

President of NCAA Mark Emmert told reporters during the men’s basketball Final Four that the members of the board of governors would need to meet to discuss whether the bill made adequate changes to the law. Emmert believed that a decision on whether to award future championship games to arenas in North Carolina could be possible within this year.

Was this repeal an attempt to support the LGBTQ community? Or was this a result to save big businesses? Because of such a weak effect, several worry that this was a response to put the economy in line before the community rights. Several Americans are not affected by this bill, but if the North Carolina government will not change, are the minority of Americans willing to resort to alternative locations?