California is fighting intolerance by tightening the purse strings for state officials traveling to US states deemed to have enacted prejudicial laws.
State employees, including staff from the University of California, have been banned from using public funding to travel to Alabama, Kentucky, South Dakota and Texas because of recent “discriminatory legislation.”
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The ban was announced on Thursday by California Attorney General Xavier Becerra and is an extension to Assembly Bill No 1887.
The bill, approved in September 2016, is an attempt by California lawmakers to “avoid supporting or financing discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people.”
It prohibits state agencies and departments from requiring staff members to travel to a state that, after June 26, 2015, has approved a law that “authorizes” discrimination of same-sex couples or other people on the basis of their sexual or gender orientation.
“Our country has made great strides in dismantling prejudicial laws that have deprived too many of our fellow American of their precious rights. Sadly, that is not the case in all parts of our nation, even in the 21st century,” Becerra said.
“While the California DOJ works to protect the rights of all our people, discriminatory laws in any part of our country send all of us several steps back. That’s why when California said we would tolerate discrimination against LGBTQ members of our community, we meant it.”
California’s blacklist already includes Kansas, Mississippi, Tennessee and North Carolina, which was heavily criticized for a so-called ‘bathroom bill’ requiring schools to ensure students use toilet or changing facilities based on their ‘biological sex’. The measure was seen to be discriminatory towards transgender people.
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Alabama will no longer see California officials travel to the state because of its House Bill 24. Passed into law by Alabama officials, the bill prevents the state from refusing to license an adoption agency declining to carry out a service that “conflicts with the religious beliefs of the provider.”
The bill could see qualified LGBTQ couples prevented from adopting children. Similar laws have been put in place in South Dakota, Kentucky and Texas.