The most amazing thing about North Carolina’s HB2, even more than the fictions, delusions and false equivalencies its advocates conceive to justify such a law, is that even though it literally cannot accomplish its alleged goal, supporters seem willing to absorb an avalanche of unintended consequences.

“The purpose of HB2 is to ensure that people, especially women and children but men as well, can use public restrooms, locker rooms, and changing areas without being exposed to people of the opposite biological sex,” Jane Clark Scharl of the National Review wrote in March.

Setting aside the issue of whether that’s as inherently traumatic as Scharl implies, there is this reality: The three letters in the law’s abbreviation and the thousands in the text of the bill signed into law by Gov. Pat McCrory six months ago cannot stop anyone from entering any restroom in the state of North Carolina. It might be the least enforceable law ever passed. This is why the text of HB2 does not specify what crime is committed if the law is contravened, what the penalty might be for any offense or how authorities are supposed to administer it.

And that’s how you know HB2 has nothing to do with protection and everything to do with discrimination.

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Late Monday evening, the NCAA announced it was relocating seven championship events scheduled for the state of North Carolina during the 2016-17 academic year to other venues, the most notable of those events being the NCAA Tournament sub-regional that was to be played in March at Greensboro Coliseum and the women’s soccer College Cup finals that had been set for Cary’s WakeMed Soccer Park in December.

The reaction of the person empowered to speak for the North Carolina Republican Party was astonishing: “Are we going to let our male athletes, our football players, shower with our cheerleaders? That’s what this logic is saying,” Kami Mueller told WNCN-TV.

In an earlier statement released following the NCAA’s announcement, Mueller sarcastically referenced the NCAA in the future “merging all men’s and women’s teams together as singular, unified, unisex teams” and that the decision “is an assault to female athletes across the nation. If you are unwilling to have women’s bathrooms and locker rooms, how do you have a women’s team?”

This hysterical obfuscation illustrates a central point about those who argue in favor of HB2: They can’t. In Mueller’s printed statement and in the aired portion of her television interview, she doesn’t make a single point to support the law’s necessity. Because there is no need. Mueller doesn’t even bother to invent one.

HB2 exists for a simple reason: In February, the city of Charlotte passed a non-discrimination ordinance that forbade discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity in regards to public accommodations, “public vehicles for hire” or city contractors.

A particular faction in the state could not let that stand. The state legislature and senate wiped it out a month later with HB2, which prohibits municipalities in the state from passing their own anti-discrimination ordinances and buried that central purpose beneath the vacuous bathroom regulations.

The NCAA never has argued against separate restrooms or changing facilities for men and women. Those who’ve campaigned against HB2 haven’t, either. It’s not logical. There will be no effort to eliminate athletic teams for women or fold them into men’s teams. That would be against federal law. There’s little doubt Mueller knows this. The desperation is so overwhelming in her statements, though, reason becomes an immediate casualty.

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That desperation, indeed, is justified. The NCAA’s evacuation was only the latest HB2 consequence to a state whose economy had been the fastest-growing in the nation over the past three years. Since the bill was passed, North Carolina has lost such lucrative entertainment events as the 2017 NBA All-Star Game , future television productions by A&E and possibly other entertainment companies and performances by artists including Bruce Springsteen, Pearl Jam, Cirque du Soleil and the Demi Lovato/Nick Jonas tour. PayPal canceled a planned expansion that would have created 400 jobs, and Deutsche Bank abandoned an expansion that was worth another 250 jobs. Five states and the District of Columbia installed travel bans for government business, and seven U.S. counties and 27 cities have done the same. Myriad trade shows and conventions — gone.

By May, a report from the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law was estimating HB2 could cost North Carolina $5 billion a year.

The Atlantic Coast Conference, founded in Greensboro nearly 63 years ago, is evaluating its position in the aftermath of the NCAA’s decision. The league’s presidents meet this week and are likely to announce some reaction. Commissioner John Swofford, a native of North Wilkesboro who attended North Carolina and served as the school’s athletic director, said in a statement, “It’s time for this bill to be repealed as it’s counter to basic human rights.”

It is not a basic right for North Carolina to annually host a first-round NCAA Tournament site, though it might have seemed that way as the event returned to the state in 13 of the past 17 years. The removal of that privilege, though, is another blow to a state whose advancement in the past two decades had become one of America’s great successes.

It’s hard to understand why North Carolina wants so desperately to move backward.