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NBA moving 2017 All-Star Game out of North Carolina due to anti-LGBT restroom bill

Posted at 12:39 PM, Jul 21, 2016
and last updated 2016-07-22 02:12:44-04

The NBA has decided to pull next season's All-Star Game out of Charlotte due to a North Carolina restroom law that impacts the LGBT community.

North Carolina's House Bill 2, a bill passed in March that requires people to use public restrooms that correspond to the sex listed on their birth certificates, is the issue at hand.

According to NBA insider Adrian Wojnarowski, who broke the story Thursday, "NBA commissioner Adam Silver had threatened to move All-Star Weekend out of Charlotte unless a discriminatory North Carolina law aimed at the state’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community was changed – and time to do so has run out because of the logistics and planning the NBA needs to run its marquee midseason event, league sources said."

"The law also omits LGBT people from North Carolina’s anti-discrimination protections, forbids local governments from widening LGBT protections and excludes all forms of workplace discrimination lawsuits from North Carolina state courts," Wojnarowski noted.

"Without any movement by state legislators in North Carolina to change newly enacted laws targeted at the LGBT community, the NBA is pulling the 2017 All-Star Game out of Charlotte."

Wojnarowski said the NBA is looking to relocate the game to the Smoothie King Center in New Orleans. A formal announcement about the fate of the All-Star Game could come as soon as this week, he said.