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A few weeks ago, the Georgia State Legislature passed a voter reform bill that much of the rest of the nation looked at and raised a number of alarms about the law, claiming that it disenfranchised many poor and minority voters.

Well, almost immediately, it began to impact the Georgia economy. Many businesses are severing contracts with Georgia-based entities, a handful of film and TV production companies announced their intentions to give up the state’s lucrative tax breaks and film elsewhere, and even Major League Baseball pulled the 2021 All-Star Game from the Atlanta Braves’ home stadium, Truist Park.

So, all of that is in Georgia, right? So, what? This is Arkansas. Well, it turns out that the same eyes that saw what happened in Georgia have turned their gaze upon our state and what our own state legislature has been up to recently.

I won’t go into all of it, but the new law that will likely have the most immediate impact is the law banning trans athletes from competing in the gender class with which they identify. If that’s too technical a term, in simple language, a person who is born and identified by their biology as a male but later identifies as a female can not compete in women’s athletics in the State of Arkansas.

I’ll be honest with you and say I don’t really object to this law, at least on the surface. I don’t know that we needed a law to cover such a very small percentage of the population and I would have thought that such rare instances

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could be handled on a caseby- case but I guess using a sledgehammer on a thumbtack still gets the job done.

Anyway, I don’t know if this law is actually “protecting” and female athletes from anything but I do know it is going to hit the state right in the pocketbook. You see, the NCAA is strongly against this law and others like it popping up across the country and so they are planning to deny any pitches by schools in these states to hold NCAA-sanctioned tournaments, regional championships, multischool events and other money-drawing affairs that schools like the University of Arkansas and Arkansas State University might otherwise land.

Just this past week, the Razorbacks put in a bid to host one of the 2021 NCAA Baseball World Series Regionals, a multischool event that would not only bring visitors and revenue to the state but also give the Razorbacks a chance to play postseason baseball on their home turf, a small edge that could mean the difference between the No. 1-ranked Diamond Hogs making a return trip to the College World Series.

The NCAA is likely to pick another school to host the event simply because it won’t have to answer questions about why it would give the tournament to a school in a state where all of its student athletes aren’t welcome.

Is it right? Is it fair? The bottom line is it doesn’t matter, because the NCAA is simply doing what it believes is right, and they won’t be the last entity to steer clear of this state because of some very unnecessary legislation that our elected leaders chose to enact simply because they enjoy a majority in the legislature.

And no one can blame these companies because if it came to picking one state over another for starting a business or holding a big event, which would you pick? A state that has a policy that many people find discriminatory or one that doesn’t?

Choosing Arkansas, for many industries going forward,

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