California has banned state-funded travel to 17 states over LGBTQ laws | Hacker News Reader

California has banned state-funded travel to 17 states over LGBTQ laws

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19 pointsBenlights28 comments

Gender politics aside… is this legal (in the eyes of the US federal govt) for the state of California to do? Is it precedented for one state to ban state-funded interaction with a fellow state for some cause?

"No preference shall be given by any regulation of commerce or revenue to the ports of one state over those of another: nor shall vessels bound to, or from, one state, be obliged to enter, clear or pay duties in another." Some irrelevant documentation left by legacy government programmers.

How much of this now-banned travel is by ship? It's not like the founders didn't know about overland travel to make sure it was included if they wanted to. The way the courts have interpreted it matters. Tossing it out without that context is meaningless.

Ports include airports.

If only the constitution created a branch of government charged with interpreting the constitution. They would have produced a body of rulings over the years that help guide us in situations like that.

Oh...wait.

https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/inte...

So it seems to be relevant to the federal government trying to favor one state over another in taxation. Someone could sue over this and establish new precedent on this subject, but it doesn't seem relevant right now.

It’s not just about taxation. The port preference could apply, but I think it’s focusing on the federal government not state-to-state

Your link discusses this near the bottom

Maybe one of those 17 would have standing to sue California; but I don’t think they’re too beat up about California government officials not coming to pay them a visit. In the end, it is California isolating itself, not anyone else.

I'm not a constitutional law expert, but based on current precedent on money being a form of speech, this would probably fall under that. The state isn't banning interaction with or travel to those states, it's just saying that it won't support those states by paying for travel there. Employees can travel there if they wish by spending their own money. If it's a work related trip, California will still pay their salary during the time they are in the banned state, I believe.

Yes and here it is:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privileges_and_Immunities_Clau...

California is pretending they're somehow more equal than other states. Kind a defeats the purpose of being a "United" nation if other states can impose policies on other states because they think they're offensive and not as enlightened as themselves.

This seems to prevent states from legislating the kind of discrimination that caused this ban in the first place.

States paying for travel to states that don't respect equal protection under the law might not be legal. This is the kind of question opened by the Supreme Court ruling that the Civil Rights Act protects LGBTQ employees. It's why we have courts.

Yes. This doesn’t ban travel outright; just the use of state funds for state employees to travel. The state of California is not stopping LAX to Birmingham flights for example which would be unconstitutional. Due to the tenth amendment states have wide latitude on how to use their money.

My main thought here is that this seems like a terrible precedent and a dangerous path (again, divorce the ban from the hot button topic). Since they shouldn't like California's apparently unprecedented policy against them, it would be commensurate for North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas to collectively enact a much more severe counter-ban on exports and interstate trade involving anything funded by state funds heading to California, thereby dividing the nation clean in half (but for a little interstateless section of Nebraska) and cutting off California from major sources of fuel and farming, while this whole issues gets sorted out in court. Is the ban illegal? Absolutely, but go ahead, we'll wait, this might take a few years to sort out in various courts, we are heavily restricting natural gas and oil flows in the meantime. Set a precedent against one large state attempting to strong arm other smaller states into obeying its orders. Simply stating "its only state employee travel, not that big of a deal" is not constructive to what clearly is a first step of many down a path of weakening US interstate commerce.

California will show us the true meaning of discrimination.

Honest question. If I was some sort of authority figure with the state’s building inspection. I have a need to travel to Florida to inspect that building collapse because I’m an expert in that field. Does this mean I need to pay out of pocket to do work?

How does it work if I have legit business there?

Why should California pay for you to inspect a building in Florida? If the federal government or Florida wants to hire you as a consultant then they can pay.

States help each other all the time during rescue efforts and send experts who can help the local authorities.

I believe Mexico sent rescue experts to FL given their expertise in rescuing from collapsed buildings.

Like sending firefighters

There are exceptions allowed for various things: https://oag.ca.gov/ab1887/faqs

Odds are you pay out of pocket then get reimbursed. Your boss can't use state funds to buy your ticket "because policy" but they can refund you for "miscellaneous travel expenses incurred on the job". This sort of thing is a well practiced workflow in most bureaucracies.

There are a number of exceptions, including "For the protection of public health, welfare, or safety, as determined by the affected agency, department, board, authority, or commission, or by the affected legislative office".

https://oag.ca.gov/ab1887

It also says that you can't be required by your job to travel to those states. So if they declare it an exception, they'll pay for it. If they don't declare it an exception, you can't be required to go. Under no circumstances could you be forced to pay for it yourself.

This isn't a "ban" this is a decision to not spend CA state money to fund travel to these locations.

Private funded travel is fine.

Sounds like a non-story to me.

I have thought for years that the modern trend of extreme polarization, radicalization, and focus on identity politics has a real risk of leading to some kind of civil war scenario. With the rioting last year from both liberals and conservatives (cities looted and burning, the capitol invaded) and now this inter-state tension, I think we're unfortunately seeing some major acceleration towards the civil war scenario.

The Overton window has shifted to a place with exotic physics when people trying to overthrow the government as it certifies a legal election are described as conservative.

I'm just using colloquial terms. I don't consider progressive people progressive (they're much more regressive in many ways), but it's a simple way to describe the people involved. Republican, alt-right, trump supporters, qanon; whatever label you prefer over "conservative" is probably good enough to get my point across

I actually have no idea what people mean with them these days. They don't say anything without explanation given all the contradictory uses, so they aren't very useful as words. They're the worst kind of jargon.

You might try being specific next time. If you're at the point of clarifying you mean regressive when you say progressive, you can't convince me the words mean anything.

I am specific enough for people who have a reasonable understanding of current colloquialisms. "Progressive" in the context of American politics has a pretty standard meaning, it's just one that I wouldn't call "progressive" in a societal sense. Similar for "conservative" etc. I think if you use context clues it makes modern political jargon more understandable, especially if you discard any expectation that the label is connected to the definition of the word in a general context.

> The Human Rights Center predicts 2021 will break records as the worst year for what it views as anti-LGBTQ legislation, surpassing 2015 when 15 new anti-LGBTQ bills were signed into law.

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