California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced on Monday that California would restrict state-funded travel to Arkansas, Florida, Montana, North Dakota, and West Virginia because of the “anti-LGBTQ+ legislation” recently enacted in these states, increasing the number of the targeted states to a total of 17.
“Assembly Bill 1887 is about aligning our dollars with our values,” Bonta said at a news conference. “When states discriminate against LGBTQ+ Americans, California law requires our office to take action.”
Assembly Bill 1887 became part of California law in 2016 in response to a North Carolina law that requires people to use public bathrooms according to the sex shown on their birth certificate.
Some exceptions are travels for law enforcement, litigation, or to comply with requests by the federal government to appear before committees, among others.
“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 added.
California asserted the law “does protect agencies that discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.”
In its unsigned order, the Supreme Court said on April 26 it won’t hear the dispute but didn’t explain why justices rejected Paxton’s challenge.
“Can we justify our refusal to entertain Texas’s suit on essentially the same ground that we would reject out of hand in the hypothetical diversity case just described, that is, on the ground that our original jurisdiction no longer seems as important as it was when the Constitution was adopted, and that a proliferation of original cases would crowd out more important matters on our appellate docket?” Alito wrote at the time.
