North Carolina legislators have reportedly drafted revisions to the state’s anti-LGBT law HB 2 as a result of pressure from the NBA.
The NBA is set to hold the 2017 All-Star Game in Charlotte, the city whose pro-LGBT human rights ordinance spurred Republican legislators to rush the discriminatory HB 2 through the state legislature in just one day.
HB 2 bans all local LGBT rights ordinances and also requires that individuals use bathrooms that match their gender at birth, not their gender identity.
WBTV reports on the draft revisions:
Among the draft bill’s biggest changes is the creation of an official document that would recognize a person’s gender reassignment. The new document, which is treated as the equivalent as a birth certificate in the draft legislation, is referred to as a certificate of sex reassignment.
“An individual who (i) was born in another state or territory of the United States that does not provide a mechanism for amending a current certificate of birth or issuing a new certificate of birth to change the sex of an individual following sex reassignment surgery and (ii) resides in this State at the time of the written application may request a certificate of sex reassignment from the State Registrar,” the legislation reads. “The State Registrar shall issue a certificate of sex reassignment upon a written application from an individual accompanied by a notarized statement from the physician who performed the sex reassignment surgery or from a physician licensed to practice medicine who has examined the individual and can certify that the person has undergone sex reassignment surgery.”
The draft bill also amends portions of HB2 related to protections for employees by adding specific references to federal statutes that provide special protections for certain groups of people. Other changes in the draft legislation increase the penalties for suspects convicted of committing certain offenses in a multi-person bathroom or changing facility.
A source who has been a party to the conversations between league officials and state legislators told WBTV, “What the league is looking for is for anyone to be able to use, at any All Star venue, the bathroom associated with their gender identity.”
NBA Hall of Famer Charles Barkley called on the NBA to pull the All-Star Game from Charlotte over HB 2. In April, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said that the game would be moved if lawmakers didn’t change HB 2.
