The no-travel list has grown to include 26 states that enacted laws discriminating against LGBTQ people. | Rich Pedroncelli/AP PhotoSACRAMENTO, Calif. — California turned its back on red states that passed anti-LGBTQ laws. Now, lawmakers appear ready to try the opposite approach.
A measure by state Sen. Toni Atkins, a San Diego Democrat in her final year as Senate leader, is expected to pass in the final days of the Legislature’s 2023 session. Her bill would repeal the travel prohibition and replace it with an outreach campaign that would bring pro-LGBTQ messages to television screens and highway billboards in red states.
Democrats in the Legislature created the travel ban in 2016, after North Carolina passed a “bathroom bill” that prohibited transgender people from using the public restroom of their gender identity . Assemblymember Evan Low, a Democrat from Silicon Valley who carried the 2016 bill that created the travel ban, could be the bill’s most significant hurdle. Low said he’s “very conflicted” about funding travel to states where LGBTQ people could be denied public accommodations or harmed if they are trans and need medical care.Republicans also oppose the bill because of the cost of the outreach program, $583,000 per year, to influence laws in other states.
Atkins grew up in rural southwestern Virginia, in a conservative community where her parents were devout Pentecostals. She said she saw almost no positive depictions of lesbians or LGBTQ people growing up.