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Is the NCAA Serious About Gay Rights? We're About to Find Out

  • NCAA will award championship host cities through 2022 in April
  • Texas, others consider bills similar to North Carolina’s HB2
South Carolina's Chris Silva dunks against Duke's Frank Jackson in a second-round game of the NCAA men's college basketball tournament in Greenville, South Carolina, on March 19, 2017.

South Carolina's Chris Silva dunks against Duke's Frank Jackson in a second-round game of the NCAA men's college basketball tournament in Greenville, South Carolina, on March 19, 2017.

Photographer: Rainier Ehrhardt/AP

When the University of South Carolina men’s basketball team upset Duke University in the second round of the NCAA tournament, some fans traced the Blue Devils’ loss to North Carolina’s so-called bathroom bill.

It’s not so far-fetched. Typically, a top-seeded Duke team could expect to play its opening-round games in North Carolina, and Greensboro had been picked to host again in 2017. But after the passage of a law that prohibited local anti-discrimination protections for LGBT people, the National Collegiate Athletic Association said it would no longer host championships there. The games that were scheduled for Greensboro, North Carolina, moved instead to Greenville, South Carolina. In front of a hostile crowd, Duke lost by seven.