Gov. Pat McCrory is firing back, the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) pulled its championship events from North Carolina to protest the state’s bathroom privacy law.

He calls the move another “economic threat” and “political retaliation” toward his state as it challenges the Obama administration’s government overreach.

McCrory released the following statement:

The issue of redefining gender and basic norms of privacy will be resolved in the near future in the United States court system for not only North Carolina, but the entire nation. I strongly encourage all public and private institutions to both respect and allow our nation’s judicial system to proceed without economic threats or political retaliation toward the 22 states that are currently challenging government overreach.

North Carolina filed a brief in U.S. District Court in response to the Obama administration’s lawsuit against the state’s privacy-protecting HB2 law titled the “Public Facilities Privacy & Security Act.” The Obama administration claims the law, passed in March, violates the civil rights of gay and transgender individuals.

President Barack Obama’s transgender-boosting administration “fails to grasp the serious privacy and public safety problems” caused by its effort to prohibit single-sex bathrooms and to urge individuals to decide which of the two sexes’ private bathrooms they desire to use at any given moment, says the brief.

The brief cites examples from a former FBI sex crimes expert and a metropolitan sheriff demonstrating the ease with which “male predators could easily exploit the subjective access policy favored by the United States to invade the privacy and safety of North Carolina’s most vulnerable citizens.”

McCrory signed the privacy and public safety bill into law to replace an ordinance in Charlotte that allowed any man who simply declared himself to be a woman to use women’s restrooms. The ordinance was pushed forward by registered sex offender Chad Sevearance-Turner and national gay-advocacy groups.

As Breitbart Sports reported, the ACC followed the lead of the NCAA in pulling its 2016-’17 championship events out of North Carolina. The conference released the following statement:

As members of the Atlantic Coast Conference, the ACC Council of Presidents reaffirmed our collective commitment to uphold the values of equality, diversity, inclusion and non-discrimination. Every one of our 15 universities is strongly committed to these values and therefore, we will continue to host ACC Championships at campus sites. We believe North Carolina House Bill 2 is inconsistent with these values, and as a result, we will relocate all neutral site championships for the 2016-17 academic year. All locations will be announced in the future from the conference office.

Clemson University president James P. Clements, chair of the ACC Council of Presidents, added his own statement:

The ACC presidents engaged in a constructive, wide-ranging and vigorous discussion of this complex issue over the past two days. The decision to move the neutral site championships out of North Carolina while HB 2 remains the law was not an easy one but it is consistent with the shared values of inclusion and non-discrimination at all of our institutions.

Family Research Council president Tony Perkins, however, has praised McCrory for his “political courage” and “moral clarity” in refusing to cave to pressure from the NBA and other sports organizations, as well as celebrities and businesses that have refused to do business in North Carolina because of the HB2 law.

“He stared down the giant of the NBA and stood strong against government discrimination of private entities and for the principles of protecting privacy and safety in government buildings,” Perkins said about McCrory.

“My home state of Louisiana, like North Carolina, is one of 32 states in the U.S. that does not force private businesses to allow men in women’s showers, locker rooms, and restrooms,” Perkins added. “On the other hand, in New Orleans—the same as in Charlotte—the NBA will be free to divide the restrooms at its own event on the basis of self-professed “gender identity” instead of objective biological sex, if it wishes to do so.”

Perkins said that “only politics” was motivating the boycott of the state – and not real concern for transgender individuals.

“The hypocrisy of the NBA over North Carolina’s HB 2 law is utterly stunning,” he continued. “The NBA is willing to turn a blind eye and play games in countries, like the People’s Republic of China, that regularly oppress their own citizens.”

Other pro-family groups have made the point about the hypocrisy of organizations and companies – such as Apple, Intel, and Disney – which condemn states that do not cave to political pressure to make gay and transgendered individuals a protected class in the U.S., yet do business in countries that actually execute gays.

Obama is using the issue of transgendered bathrooms to promote the transgender ideology, which says government should require Americans to endorse people’s declarations about their own sex or “gender fluidity,” regardless of biology. In August, the president’s deputies inserted a rule into the Federal Register that prohibits all federal properties and facilities from operating single-sex bathrooms.

Similarly, in May, the Obama administration issued a directive that all public schools must allow gender-confused students to use the bathrooms and locker rooms according to their preferred “gender identity” at any given time. As is often the case with Obama’s decrees, the directive is backed by threats to cut federal funding designated for school districts that oppose the policy.

According to one study of the 2010 census, the population of transgender people amounts to one in every 2,400 Americans, or 0.03 percent of the adult population. Multiple polls show that Obama’s transgender policy is very unpopular.