The San Francisco 49ers Pledge $75,000 To Overturn North Carolina’s Bathroom Bill

via Flickr user (cc) Jimrat201

Pressure is mounting on North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory to repeal HB2, better known as the transphobic “Bathroom Bill.” The state stands to lose hundreds of millions in federal funding after the Justice Department announced it will act “in compliance with federal law” as it relates to HB2. Plus, the NBA has announced it will move the 2017 All-Star game out of Charlotte if HB2 isn’t changed, and now the NFL has made a statement.

Although the NFL didn’t react to pressure for it to move its owners’ meetings held this week in Charlotte, North Carolina, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell issued a strong statement saying the league was against any form of discrimination. “We have our policies that do not support in any way discrimination. It’s very important for us to have diversity. We’ve made that clear publicly. We’ve made that clear in other situations,” he said in a statement on Tuesday. “We made a commitment here a long time ago [with the Carolina Panthers]. The city of Charlotte has continued to fight this issue. We support those efforts. Anything that discriminates is something we oppose, and we will continue to fight that.”

Of the 32 teams represented in the meetings, one owner took his team’s support of the transgender community a step further by putting its money where its mouth is. San Francisco 49ers’ CEO Jed York pledged $75,000 to Equality North Carolina (ENC), an organization whose mission is “securing equal rights and justice for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) North Carolinians.”

“The San Francisco 49ers are deeply concerned about North Carolina’s recently-enacted House Bill 2, which overturned protections for LGBT people and sanctioned discrimination across the state,” York said in a joint statement with ENC. “HB2 does not reflect the values of our organization, of our country, or the majority of North Carolinians.” The NFL’s support of LGBT rights is important because it brings the issues to sports fans that may not have gender rights on their radars.