Attorney General Rob Bonta. (Photo: Kevin Sanders for California Globe)
California Adds Five States to State Travel Ban Following New LGBT Discrimination Laws
Arkansas, Florida, Montana, North Dakota, and West Virginia boost the number of travel-banned states to 17
By Evan Symon, June 29, 2021 2:22 am
California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced Monday that California would be adding 5 more states to the state travel ban due to their new laws that restrict LGBT and transgender rights.
Arkansas, Florida, Montana, North Dakota, and West Virginia now join 12 other states, including Idaho, Texas, and Tennessee, to have banned travel under AB 1887. Authored by Assemblyman Evan Low (D-Campbell) and signed into law by then-Governor Jerry Brown in 2016, AB 1887 forbids all state-paid travel to states that have laws that discriminate ‘based on sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression’. While there are health and safety travel exceptions, they have otherwise withstood the test of the last several years, including Texas being turned down by the U.S. Supreme Court in trying to overturn the law in April and states such as Oklahoma banning travel to California in turn.
“Assembly Bill 1887 is about aligning our dollars with our values,” said Attorney General Bonta in a statement on Monday. “When states discriminate against LGBTQ+ Americans, California law requires our office to take action. These new additions to the state-funded travel restrictions list are about exactly that. It’s been 52 years to the day since the Stonewall Riots began, but that same fight remains all too alive and well in this country. Rather than focusing on solving real issues, some politicians think it’s in their best interest to demonize trans youth and block life-saving care. Make no mistake: We’re in the midst of an unprecedented wave of bigotry and discrimination in this country — and the State of California is not going to support it.”
Specifically, California opposes new laws in Arkansas, Florida, Montana, and West Virginia that prevent transgender girls who are biological males from participating in school sports, a North Dakota law that allows some student organizations to stop LGBT students from joining and still receiving funding, and an Arkansas law that prohibits doctors from giving gender-oriented healthcare to transgender minors.
“These are dangerous new laws that directly work to ban transgender youth from playing sports, block access to life-saving care, or otherwise limit the rights of members of the LGBTQ+ community,” added the Attorney General’s office. “The banned states are working to prevent transgender women and girls from participating in school sports, consistent with their gender identity. It’s all part of a movement to limit the rights of LGBTQ Americans as a movement.”
Reactions from state travel ban supporters, opponents
California’s action on Monday was celebrated by many LGBT organizations and advocacy groups, including the Human Rights Campaign, on Monday.
“This shows the power of LGBTQ people today,” explained Alexis Sheridan, a lawyer in San Francisco with many LGBT clients, to the Globe on Monday. “It’s happening everywhere. Georgia passed their voter restrictions, and the MLB moved their All-Star game from Atlanta to Colorado. And states pass laws that discriminate against the LGBT community, so an entire state costs them precious tax dollars from travel there.”
“It may not seem like a lot, but post-COVID, when these places are really looking for visitors to travel there and spend money, it can make a ding. That’s why Oklahoma reacted so strongly. They had a lot of Californians coming in for conferences and things a few years ago, and when the travel ban went up, that was a lot of vacant hotel rooms, empty rental cards, open restaurant tables, you name it. It won’t bankrupt them, but it stings. And California has inspired a bunch of states to enact non-essential state travel to many of these states too. One punch doesn’t do much damage, but a bunch does.”
However, many who came out against the travel ban on Monday note that the laws the states passed that spurred the bans aren’t as one-sided as they seem.
“Most of the new laws in the states that California just banned travel to did that to eliminate unfair athletic advantage,” explained Siggy Stevens, a coach in Florida who helped bring about transgender athlete bans locally in Florida, to the Globe. “You know, some of these athletes were men who became women, but still have that strength from becoming me. Some just claim it’s an advantage over [cis-gendered] athletes, but a lot of us view it more as almost cheating. There are lots of studies showing that this is the case, and this is not coming out of hate or anything like that to transgender people. We honestly haven’t really faced this level of it before, so now we have transgendered individuals who can play with an advantage blurring the lines on men’s and women’s sports.”
“We’re doing this not out of malice but because we see it as unfair. Notice that we aren’t doing this in non-athletic events or anything like that. One of the teams here actually has a transgender cheerleader, and since they are co-ed, it’s fine. But for athletics, we’re still figuring this out. If natural gendered people beat transgendered individuals, say, Laurel Hubbard, at the Olympics, then we may see this as more of a normal thing. But if they keep winning, by a lot, then we need some sort of solution that’s fair.”
“And California punishing us because we’re still working this out and not giving us the time to work out something fair to include everyone, well, that’s crazy.”
The 5 states receiving a ban today are expected to combat the Californian ban soon.
“Assembly Bill 1887 is about aligning our dollars with our values,”
Whose values are they speaking of? California politicians don’t speak for its residents any longer. We need to vote these people out.
These self righteous S.O.B.s continue to make fools of themselves.
Do they really think they are hurting the residents of Montana or North Dakota? They really don’t give a shit what the legislatures in California do or say. In fact they just laugh at these fools.
Once again the whores in the state house are selling their integrity to those who contribute to their campaigns.
These monies are well spent by them so they can send their children to private schools where they do not teach “gender awareness”.
Fixing real problems takes courage, compromise and the ability to think. All of which these whores are incapable of as they can only create theater.
5 states to consider moving too
^^^ My thoughts exactly, Enough Already!!! In fact, the total list becomes the list of 1st priority to consider moving to….
More political theater from the morons that are installed in Sacramento – don’t fix the energy delivery system, don’t fix the broken water delivery system, don’t fix the financial fraud and waste associated with bloated government pensions…
Wave the Rainbow Flag for “Pride Month” and virtue signal to the .001% of people who are affected by these gender dysphoria issues… why do the tiny minority get the majority of the attention from these morons???
Why doesn’t California just give the rest of us break and secede. I don’t want nor need their values imposed on me. I have higher standards. Then we could build a wall and keep them out of the USA
These 5 states are throwing a party. No more poisonous California gooberment “officials” spewing their woke poison in their states.
So A.G. Bonta, who speaks for the biological female athletes who can no longer fairly compete with a biological male who identify as a female! Who protects their rights? Who protects TitleIX?
This state does not represent my values as a cisgendered female. Can we not turn the argument around and say biological females are being unfairly targeted by the state of California?
How does Bonta extrapolate “hate” from another states right to make it’s own law? Where does it say they “hate” transgenders? The biological males that identify as female can compete with the biological male as they always have. Their right to compete has not been taken away from them.
Is this for all Travelers or just Federal Employees, this is just stupid!!
It’s for federal employees. It doesn’t effect as much but yes it’s very stupid.
Is this for all Travelers or just Federal Employees, this is just stupid!!
Pointless A.G. Rob Bonta, and just about everyone else in office in Sacramento, continue to demonstrate with their show-offy B.S. that their services are no longer needed.
Probably no one in the state of California remembers what the State Atty General is actually SUPPOSED to be doing. That’s because we have had such a string of shameless and incompetent A.G.s —– for as long as I can remember.
Next task : figure out how to reverse engineer the wording on the Newsom recall, so a Yes vote means No and a No vote means Yes…
It’s Standard Operating Procedure for the litany of failed California Attorney Generals… LIARS and THIEVES, all of them….
No kidding. And I mean that literally because we’ve seen that SOooooo many times before, as you rightly point out.
I worked in a California department that annually sends employees to other states to ensure that certain fees and taxes that California collects were paid to the state. Some of these states were on the “no-travel” list. So it’s not so much about principal as it is about virtue-signaling. If there is money involved, you can be damn sure California will send employees there to get the bucks. If I were Governour of these targeted states I’d tell California to suck it, we are not collecting the “tainted” money from our state to send to you. Hasta la vista.
Oooh, good info from the inside. Thank you.
That would fix the Rob Bonta & Co. virtue-signalers where they live if it happened. And it might!
As a member of the “gay community” for over 50 years who came out back in the 70’s I understand the fear of hiding from society and even from ones own family which still continues to this day and the pain and psychological suffering it engenders. The gay community is hypersensitive to this and rightfully suspicious of any seeming backsliding to repression. With that said I believe that in regards to the transgender/women’s sports issue they are on the wrong side of this if they believe forcing transgender women on cis gendered women is fair. Biology DOES EXIST and no human pseudo science can nullify it safely or permanently. The bodies of men and women are different. Not to say that there arent some women, many perhaps, who can outcompete some men physically every time but women argue that they are the exception rather than the rule and thus women’s sports was born. Can this perceived disadvantage be overcome in the future? Time might show that to be the case but shoving the argument of “equality” between born vs created gender identity down the throats of the female population is highly contentious and counter productive to the still prodigious job of acceptance for the GLBT community. Arguably women have been some of the biggest supporters of gays through time from my experience and they too have been sensitized to discrimination from centuries of religiously enforced gender defined roles. We should not be insensitive to their views and I believe from my straw poll of the women I know that they feel that there IS a significant and provable difference which gives trans women a distinct advantage over cis women on the playing field. This is NOT going to be solved by posturing and ramming trans people down the throats of those who disagree for a good reason! If the gay community alienates the majority to unquestioningly support a tiny percentage of the community it will be making a big mistake in my opinion. Trans women must take a deep breath and take this into account. It will take patience and understanding on both sides to come to an equitable solution!