CALIFORNIA, USA — California will restrict state-funded travel to five U.S. states over new anti-LGBTQ+ laws recently enacted in each state, Attorney General Rob Bonta announced on Monday.
Arkansas, Florida, Montana, North Dakota, and West Virginia join a group of states on California's travel restrictions list after they all recently signed legislation that discriminates against the LGBTQ+ community. According to a press release from the Attorney General's office, the states pushed forward 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."
Four of the 5 states added to the travel ban recently enacted laws that bar transgender women and girls from participating in school sports consistent with their gender identity, among other things.
North Dakota made the list after passing House Bill 1503, which allows publicly-funded student organizations to openly discriminate against LGBTQ+ students.
This step means that taxpayer-funded travel to any of these five states, along with the other 12 states on California's list, is banned.
"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,” Bonta said in the press release.
State-funded travel restrictions for some states will begin July 1, while others will begin in late-July and even August. The new restrictions on state-funded travel are allowed under California's Assembly Bill 1887, which was passed in 2016. Alabama, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Texas were the 12 other states already on this list.
“Assembly Bill 1887 is about aligning our dollars with our values,” Bonta said in the press release. “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."
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