Now that North Carolina has repealed specific aspects of the controversial law that limited protections for members of the LGBT community, which resulted in the NCAA and NBA barring lucrative events from being hosted there, the NCAA has now announced that they are awarding the state with men’s basketball tournament games in 2020 and 2021, along with several other championship events.
The NCAA had stripped North Carolina of seven championship events for the past sports season including opening-weekend men’s basketball tournament games and said it could relocate more events if there wasn’t a change in the “bathroom bill.”
Events already scheduled there for the 2017-18 sports season, which includes men’s basketball tournament games in Charlotte, among others, will remain in place.
The ACC also pulled 10 neutral-site events from the state last fall, including the conference’s football championship game, which was moved from Charlotte to Orlando. The conference now says that the football title game will return to Charlotte for its contractual run there through 2019.
The NBA jacked this year’s All-Star Game from Charlotte and relocated it to New Orleans due to the law as well. There’s no word yet on if the league plans to award North Carolina with another one in the near future.
The state had hosted NCAA Tournament games in 11 of 13 years before the NCAA removed Greensboro as a site for this year’s March Madness.
LGBTQ activists said the new law, HB142, didnt amount to a full repeal of HB2 and that transgender people could still be subject to discrimination.
