North Carolina Senate Democratic leader Sen. Dan Blue Senate and President pro tem Phil Berger announce a bill to replace the controversial HB2 or “bathroom bill,” which later passed, at the North Carolina General Assembly on Thursday. | AP Photo N.C. governor signs measure repealing controversial 'bathroom law'

North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper signed a measure Thursday to repeal the state's controversial "bathroom law" that leaders said damaged the state's reputation and would have cost an estimated $3 billion in lost business over a dozen years.

But activists on both sides of the issue panned the compromise deal between Cooper, a Democrat, and the GOP-controlled legislature. It is “at best a punt, at worst it is a betrayal of principle,” said state Sen. Dan Bishop, a Republican who authored House Bill 2, which passed in March 2016. The legislation required people in government buildings to use restrooms that corresponded to the sex on their birth certificates and barred cities from enacting new anti-discrimination rules.


The law – which repeals HB2 but restricts local anti-discrimination ordinances until 2020 – comes at a key time for the state. The National Collegiate Athletic Association is expected to announce site locations for championships and tournaments in the coming weeks, and it had threatened to keep games out of the state until House Bill 2 was repealed. The NCAA had already moved basketball tournament games out of the state for this year, meaning men’s teams from Duke University and the University of North Carolina played in South Carolina instead of closer to home.

"It's not a perfect deal, but it repeals House Bill 2 and begins to repair our reputation," Cooper said in a statement released late Wednesday night, before the legislature voted on the bill.

Under pressure from the business community, legislators spent much of the last year attempting to broker a deal that would repeal HB2, a law that nearly two-thirds of North Carolina voters said they would rather dismantle than enforce. A long list of big businesses, including Wells Fargo and Dow Chemical, called for its repeal last year, while the NBA chose to relocate its 2017 All-Star game away from Charlotte. HB2 also claimed a political casualty, as Republican Gov. Pat McCrory, who vigorously defended the law, lost reelection to Cooper, who ran on repealing it.

Supporters of the deal defended it as a “step forward from this terrible piece of legislation that was passed in March of 2016,” said state Rep. Darren Jackson, a Democrat who helped lead negotiations on repealing HB2.

In a 70-to-48 vote in the state House, the bill passed a final legislative hurdle on Thursday and Cooper signed it into law hours later. But the votes did not fall along party lines, as dozens of hardline Republicans and Democrats voted against the deal.

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Both liberal and conservative groups criticized the proposed compromise. The Human Rights Campaign called the proposal a "bad deal that does not actually repeal HB2. Instead, it doubles down on discrimination."

“Basketball is important, but so are the civil rights of marginalized communities,” said Equality NC’s executive director Chris Sgro, speaking to reporters in front of the North Carolina legislative building.

Conservatives took the opposite, but equally critical, position. “No NCAA basketball game, corporation, or entertainment concert is worth even one little girl being harmed or frightened in a bathroom. She should not lose her privacy and dignity to a boy in a locker room," N.C. Values Coalition executive director Tami Fitzgerald said in a statement.

But the business community, which actively lobbied legislators to repeal HB2, congratulated Cooper and the GOP leadership, thanking them for “their leadership in providing a bipartisan solution for North Carolina to move forward,” per a statement from the Charlotte Chamber of Commerce.