The news broke today that the 2019 NBA All-Star game will be held in Charlotte, North Carolina after the repeal of the hb2 act. This act previously required any persons in a government building to use the restroom that correlates with the gender listed on their birth certificate. Many saw the hb2 act as discriminatory towards people in the LGBT community and caused the NBA to move the 2017 All-Star game from Charlotte to New Orleans.
The act that repealed the bathroom rule of hb2, hb142, is not seen by many as a step forward towards helping to protect the rights of the LGBT community. This opinion is due to Section 3 of the act stating; no local governments may create ordinances that change the regulation of any private employment practices on public accommodations and Section 4 goes on to state that Section 3 is effective until December 1, 2020.
However, this tiny act does not come as a surprise due to Charlotte estimating their loss from the All-Star game switch to be $395 million. That loss caused the original backer of hb2 to lose re-election and the city to move quickly to make up for what was lost.
So essentially this one-page act was created just to meet the NBA’s demands for Charlotte to host another event, for which, The NBA and Adam Silver have decided is good enough. Silver stated today that “While we understand the concerns of those who say the repeal of HB2 did not go far enough, we believe the recent legislation eliminates the most egregious aspects of the prior law.” This move by the NBA can be seen as almost a “make-up call” for their “bait and switch” of the 2017 All-Star game and even Silver admits that the repeal did nothing more to protect members of the LGBT community.
No matter your opinion on the events that occurred in Charlotte, as of right now, we will be seeing the best of the best lace it up on a court in 2019. Who knows what will happen in the two years until the All-Star break of the 18’-19’ season but we can expect Charlotte to keep their end of the bargain and not take a step backward.
