CHARLOTTE, N.C. --Reaction to the NBA’s Decision to remove the 2017 All Star Game from Charlotte because of House Bill 2 ran along political lines.

Governor Pat McCrory, a former Charlotte Mayor expressed his disappointment, and focused blame.  “The sports and entertainment elite, Attorney General Roy Cooper and the liberal media have for months misrepresented our laws and maligned the people of North Carolina simply Because most people believe boys and girls should be able to use school bathrooms, locker rooms and showers without the opposite sex present,” McCrory said.

McCrory pointed out that 21 other states have joined North Carolina to challenge what he calls the “federal overreach by the Obama administration mandating their bathroom policies in all businesses and schools instead of allowing accommodations for unique circumstances.”

The governor says left-wing special interest groups do not have moral authority to “intimidate the large majority of American parents who agree in common-sense bathroom and shower privacy for children.”

He warns, “American families should be on notice that the selective corporate elite are imposing their political will on communities in which they do business, thus bypassing the democratic and legal process.”

But opponents of House Bill 2, which requires transgender people to use the public bathrooms and shower facilities of their gender at birth, say the NBA’s decision shows it’s time for McCrory to accept reality and call for a full repeal of the law.

The group Progress NC Action says the NBA’s decision is evidence that HB2 is an economic disaster for North Carolina.

Gerrick Brenner, Executive Director of Progress NC Action, says “Over $100 million in economic activity is leaving our state because of Governor McCrory’s discriminatory law, on top of the hundreds of jobs and millions in tourism dollars that our state has already lost over HB2.”