NCAA yanks all championships from North Carolina over bathroom law

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The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) has announced it is removing seven championship events from the state of North Carolina in protest of the state’s law requiring people to use public bathrooms that match the sex on their birth certificate.

The announcement was made late Monday evening by the NCAA’s board of governors, and comes two months after the NBA made a similar decision to move next year’s All-Star Game. Several state governments have also restricted travel to the state, and many musical acts have canceled scheduled shows.

The organization justified its move by citing specific aspects of North Carolina law, such as transgender people’s inability to use bathrooms that match their gender identity and a ban on local municipalities passing non-discrimination ordinances that include gender identity and sexual orientation. The laws, the board of governors said, conflicted with the NCAA’s institutional commitment to “fairness and inclusion.”

“Current North Carolina state laws make it challenging to guarantee the host communities can help deliver on that commitment if NCAA events remained in the state,” the NCAA said in a statement.

The most significant events being moved are several matches from the first two rounds of the 2017 men’s basketball tournament. The state is also losing Division I and and Division III soccer championships, Division I women’s golf and lacrosse, Division II baseball, and Division III tennis.
