NCAA chief played hardball with 'religious freedom' law

“(T)hey all grossly underestimated, to be polite, the reaction of the citizens of Indiana,” Emmert said Thursday of the firestorm ignited after Pence signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act into law a week ago. Critics of the law said it was a license to discriminate against gays and lesbians under the guise of religion.

In past days, Emmert said the NCAA would consider pulling its major sporting events — including the Final Four and the $700 million it generates for the tourism industry in Indiana — if the Legislature didn’t act.

Emmert opened the press conference, attended by scores of national media outlets in town to cover the NCAA men’s basketball championship, by saying the public furor sparked by the law had “overshadowed” the games.

But he elevated the issue by saying that the furor was deserved: He said a law that would allow business owners to refuse service to individuals based on their sexual orientation was “more important than a basketball tournament.”

Emmert’s comments came as Indiana lawmakers rushed to revise the law, to tamp down growing threats from the NCAA and other organizations to pull their events and business from Indiana if the measure wasn’t fixed. Pence has defended the original law’s language, blaming the fallout on “misperception” generated by irresponsible media coverage.

But to make sure Pence and lawmakers got the point Thursday, Emmert also said he would recommend the Indianapolis-based NCAA move its headquarters from any area “that didn’t prohibit discrimination.”

“I hope we don’t find ourselves in that place,” he said. “We hope they can resolve it quickly, not just because of this event but because it’s an important issue to get the law right on and get it right fast.”

The NCAA moved its headquarters to Indianapolis in 1999, after the state and city offered the organization a $50 million incentive package to re-locate here from Kansas.

Indiana lawmakers added language to the law Thursday that explicitly states that the measure doesn’t authorize businesses to refuse service to gays and lesbians. But they stopped short of banning discrimination against gays and lesbians as a “protected class” similar to race and gender.

Emmert said he personally supported adding sexual orientation and gender identity to the list of classes of people protected by Indiana’s civil rights law and would bring the issue to NCAA governing board next month.

“I think it would be appropriate. It’s, again, consistent with the values of our office and staff,” he said.

Much of the press conference was dominated by questions about the law and the NCAA’s role in forcing legislators back to the table to fix it.

Emmert said he’d spoken privately to Pence and legislative leaders while the measure was being debated in the General Assembly. He said the NCAA governing board decided to join the growing chorus of public criticism because Pence was unable to provide any reassurance that the law would not include any discriminatory aspects.

This fact was “completely inconsistent to all the things I know the (NCAA) membership values,” Emmert told reporters.

Still, the Legislature’s fast rush to adopt the legislation caught Emmert off guard, he said: “We were all surprised with the speed with which it came about and the speed with which the governor signed it.”

The NCAA decided to press harder on the issue, even as Pence and legislative leaders publicly denied the bill was ever designed to allow businesses to deny services to gays and lesbians.

“The reality that no one could offer any reassurance that this bill would not protect people from discriminatory acts based upon sexual orientation or gender identity was completely inconsistent with all the things that I know the (NCAA) membership values,” Emmert said.

The NCAA was among the first major organizations to publicly threaten a boycott of Indianapolis when the law, known as RFRA, was passed last week. It went public soon after sports analyst Jason Collins, the NBA’s first openly gay player, directed a sharp tweet at Pence, asking: “Is it going to be legal for someone to discriminate against me & others when we come to the ?#?FinalFour??”

More pressure quickly followed. Charley Sullivan, an openly gay coach of the seven-time national champion men’s rowing team at the University of Michigan, called for the NCAA to immediately move the men’s Final Four somewhere else. He said the original RFRA law is “abhorrent, it is hateful, and it goes against the NCAA’s own professed values of equality and inclusion.”

University of Notre Dame women’s basketball Muffet McGraw chimed in, asking the NCAA to consider pulling the women’s tournament in 2016 from Indianapolis. The University of Connecticut basketball coach, whose team won the national championship last year, decided to boycott the Final Four after the Connecticut governor barred all state-sponsored travel to Indiana.

The threats to move the Final Four didn’t sound empty to Indianapolis tourism and business officials. They knew NCAA already doesn’t hold post-season games in South Carolina and Mississippi because those states still fly the Confederate flag. The Indiana Sports Corp., which manages the Final Four host committee, also joined in the intense lobbying efforts to pressure Pence and legislators to fix the law.

Emmert promised the NCAA would keep an eye on the new law’s effects in both the near future and the long term. But he expressed support for actions taken Thursday by the Legislature, as they were working on a fix.

“Now they’re taking the actions that they’re taking,” Emmert said. “And we all hope, we all up here hope, that they get there.”