On Thursday, March 30, North Carolina’s state government passed a repeal of HB2, better known as the “bathroom law.” This law severely limited protections for LGBT individuals and earned its tagline as the bathroom law by specifying that transgender individuals could not use the bathroom of their gender rather than their at-birth sex. The bill has been called a “dark cloud” hanging over the state of North Carolina. HB2’s passage last year evoked anger and the boycotting of many businesses. For instance, the National Basketball Association’s All-Star game was moved out of Charlotte, North Carolina in response to the original passage of the law. The National College Athletics Association also moved championship tournament games out of North Carolina and threatened to eliminate more this year. The loss of these sports in North Carolina, along with more generalized boycotting has had severe economic impacts on the state. The hope is that, with the repeal, the economic damages caused by HB2 will begin to reverse this year.

The repeal was signed into effect on Wednesday night by Democratic Governor Roy Cooper, who ran for office on the platform issue of repealing HB2. He says the deal that involved the repeal of HB2 is “not perfect,” but that it does “begin to repair [their] reputation.” However, he admits that this new bill is “not his preferred solution,” saying that “in a perfect world, with a good General Assembly, [they] would have repealed HB2 fully … and added statewide protections for LGBT individuals.”

The compromise of the bill prevents local anti-discriminatory laws on bathroom usage until 2020. According to The New York Times, “the new law gives the General Assembly the sole power to regulate access ‘multiple occupancy restrooms, showers or changing facilities’.” Chad Griffin, President of the Human Rights Campaign, called the compromise “a state-wide prohibition on equality.”

Meanwhile, LGBT groups remain concerned about the status of their rights, fearing that the new bill still leaves LGBT individuals open to discrimination on a large scale. On the other side of the issue, the author of the HB2, Republican Senator Dan Bishop, calls the new compromise “at best a punt, at worst a betrayal of principle.”

With that said, there is no guarantee that this new bill will be sufficiently changed and end the boycotts. As well, the NCAA has not yet decided whether or not the association is comfortable enough with the changes to return some tournaments to North Carolina. Likewise, the NBA have not yet stated if the change will cause them to reevaluate their position on North Carolina at the present.