CALIFORNIA: Legislature’s Ban On Taxpayer-Funded Travel To States With Anti-LGBT Laws Goes Into Effect

From the Bay Area Reporter:

California has banned most taxpayer-funded travel to four states that have adopted anti-LGBT laws. In addition to the three Southern states that the state attorney general’s office had identified in November for inclusion on the list – Mississippi, North Carolina, and Tennessee – Kansas was also named to the official list posted online January 1.

It is the result of Assembly Bill 1887, which was authored by gay Assemblyman Evan Low [photo], going into effect January 1. The AG’s office did not explain its reasons for including the quartet of states on the travel ban list on the main page of the website, instead, it included links to the anti-LGBT laws each state has passed at the end of a separate page titled Frequently Asked Questions about the new law.

Low’s legislation was in response to North Carolina lawmakers adopting in early 2016 House Bill 2, which restricts cities in the state from enacting local non-discrimination laws and requires transgender people to use public restrooms based on the gender they were assigned at birth. Newly sworn in Democratic Governor Roy Cooper has vowed to repeal the law, though an effort to rescind it just prior to Christmas failed.

Mississippi allows for its residents and businesses to discriminate based on their religious beliefs, while Tennessee adopted a law last year allowing therapists and other mental health professionals to deny seeing LGBT patients and others for religious reasons. Kansas last year adopted a law allowing campus-based religious groups to discriminate against LGBT students.

Hit the link for more.

RELATED: Low, now 32, became mayor of Campbell, California (population 40,000) in 2009 at the age of 26, making him the youngest openly gay Asian-American mayor in US history.