Guess
How Much That Anti-LGBTQ Law Is Costing North Carolina
- AUTHOR: EMMA GREY ELLIS.
- DATE OF PUBLICATION: 09.18.16.
- TIME OF PUBLICATION: 7:00 AM.
IN
MARCH, NORTH Carolina state legislators
banned transgender people from peeing in the bathroom of their choosing.
According to the law, HB2 or the “bathroom bill,” when you’re in public
building—a government agency, a public school, whatever—the gender listed on
your birth certificate is the only one that matters. You remember the initial
hubbub: North Carolina and the federal government suing each other, the boycotts and the hashtags and the Bruce Springsteen concerts
cancelled.
In spite of that, North Carolina’s government hasn’t repealed the
law, and this week, the state lost high-profile sporting events, too, as the
ACC and the NCAA pulled their championship games out of the state in protest.
(If the NCAA is looking at you sideways, you know you’re doing
something shady.) But we’re not here to talk about how the bill is bad and
discriminatory. The DOJ made that call months
ago. So did popular opinion, both nationwide and in North Carolina itself.
Especially now that the NCAA and ACC joined in
the boycott the loss of business represents a significant economic penalty for
North Carolina. And it’s North Carolinians, most of whom don’t even support the
legislation, who get stuck with the bill. So we decided to figure out how big a
bill it is.
Adding It All Up
One thing to note: You’re never going to get an
exact, cent-perfect total—mainly because we’re talking opportunity cost here.
But here’s what we do know.
First, people are suing the crap out of these guys. North
Carolina’s Republican leadership racked up at least $176,000 in
legal fees so far, $47,000 of which is just lawyers for the beleaguered
Governor Pat McCrory. Why do those numbers matter? They are paid with tax
dollars, and they’re rising. In June, the North Carolina legislature approved
diverting $500,000 from the disaster relief fund to Governor McCrory’s
offices for HB2 litigation. Sure, this HB2 situation’s a disaster. But in a
state that sees two, three hurricanes per year
… they might have done other things with that money—especially as hurricane
season gets underway.
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So it costs taxpayers money to fight lawsuits.
How much does it cost them that businesses now see North Carolina as
a bad investment? According to the think tank Center for American
Progress, business boycotts and pullouts have cost North Carolina another
$87.7 million. Charlotte has recently been a popular filming location, so when
Lionsgate puts the kibosh on filming in North Carolina after HB2, just that led
to three million dollars down the drain.
North Carolinians lost $58.3 million when PayPal and an “unnamed
tech company” canceled their planned expansions to the state. North
Carolina has been vying the past few years for attention as the Silicon Valley
of the South, but the loss of those jobs—and the anti-HB2 amicus brief signed
by 68 companies, including notable tech giants like Apple, Dropbox, Salesforce,
Slack, SV Angel, Yelp, and Zynga— have put a damper on that campaign. “There’s
a clear drumbeat here, and a bit of a snowball effect,” says Laura Durso,
senior director of the LGBT Research and Communications Project at
the Center for American Progress. “More and more companies are taking a look at
their own values, and living those out.”
But by far the sector of North Carolina’s
economy most strapped by HB2 backlash is tourism. Leaving aside sports for a
second, by the figuring of Charlotte Regional Visitors Authority, the Greater
Raleigh Convention and Visitors Bureau, and the Greensboro Convention and
Visitors Bureau, the state’s three largest cities lost $109.4 million to
canceled conferences and other events since HB2. That’s things like the Bruce
Springsteen concert, which probably contributed about $700,000 to that loss
alone.
But now we get to where it really hurts North
Carolina most: sports. And here we’re talking the total economic impact as
opposed to direct spending. That includes the ticket sales and hotel rooms, but
also the cost to the florist down the street who would have done arrangements
for a post-game reception. When the NBA pulled their All-Star Game, North
Carolina missed out on $106 million. When the NCAA and ACC followed suit with
their championship games, it means a loss of at least another $91.4, $51
million from the NCAA events and $40.4 million from the ACC’s.
While it might sound frivolous in comparison to
losing, say, 400 highly skilled PayPal jobs with an estimated total salary of
$20 million, college basketball abandoning North Carolina is hitting the state
in its heart. “It obviously a loss for our grand basketball tradition,” says
Chris Sgro, executive director of LGBTQ rights organization Equality
North Carolina and a member of the state’s General Assembly. “In many of our
cities, we’ll have a sporting event drought for years to come if we don’t repeal
HB2.” As one North Carolinian put it: “college sports is religion in North
Carolina.” And for now it’s gone.
The Grand Total
Adding all that up, the total cost to North
Carolinians so far from HB2 protests is slightly more than $395 million. That’s
more than the GDP of Micronesia. And the bulk of it is from sporting
organizations, who even five years ago would likely not have waded into
political territory like this. But experts aren’t that surprised that the NBA,
NCAA, and ACC have taken this step now. “They’re not out on a limb here,” Durso
says. “They’re in line with their base.” The near unanimous outcry against HB2
and in support of the NCAA and ACC confirms that. Legislating discrimination
has become an expensive bad habit.
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