Back in 2016, long before the pandemic travel bans shut down the world, California became something of a trendsetter by instituting a different type of travel ban. A number of red states, such as North Carolina began passing laws limiting access to public bathrooms based on people’s actual, biological sex. This was done in response to the nascent transgender movement. The California legislature determined that the Golden State was too good to do business with such people and banned state-funded travel to North Carolina. More bans followed until the present day and the state now bans state-funded travel to roughly half of the country.

This has led to a number of unanticipated consequences. State university sports teams are unable to travel to many tournaments using public funds, but they’ve managed to find workarounds for that. But now California has become a “sanctuary” state for activities ranging from abortions to pediatric transgender medical procedures, offering to cover the costs of people coming from red states to obtain such services. And the state has recognized that it would be violating its own laws by doing this, so it appears that the travel bans may have to be lifted. (CBS News)

When North Carolina in 2016 banned transgender people from using the bathroom of their gender identity in public buildings, California retaliated by banning state-funded travel to that state and any other state with laws it deemed discriminatory against LGBTQ people.

But seven years later, California now bans state-funded travel to nearly half of the country following a surge of anti-LGBTQ legislation in mostly Republican-led states.

The prohibition means sports teams at public colleges and universities have had to find other ways to pay for road games in states like Arizona and Utah. And it has complicated some of the state’s other policy goals, like using state money to pay for people who live in other states to travel to California for abortions.

It would appear that California has fallen into a trap of its own creation. The legislators there were quick to pass judgment on states that restricted abortions or are opposed to the genital mutilation of children. In their “generosity,” California lawmakers volunteered to pay the costs of those seeking to travel there for such “services.” But according to their own laws, they could not fund the return trip, leaving the visitors to foot the bill themselves.

It’s possible that they could seek non-government funding from charitable sources or NGOs to cover the travel costs, but those are uncertain channels of revenue, particularly if any of those sources have views on trans procedures or abortion that differ from the state’s official policy. Other options are reportedly being considered.

One of those might be a completely hypocritical set of “exceptions” that could be added to the travel ban. Such exceptions already exist, after all. There is an exception for “the protection of health and safety,” but not just anyone’s safety. That caveat applies to the Governor’s armed security detail, who traveled with Gavin Newsom to Montana (a state on the banned travel list) for a family vacation last year. These people really don’t even bother trying to disguise their hypocrisy, which is always on display. The people of Montana are too much of a bunch of evil xenophobes to allow most people to go there using state funds, but it’s fine and dandy for the Governor to take his family there on a fishing trip.

At least one state senator already sees the lifting of the ban as a done deal. On Wednesday, state Senate leader Toni Atkins introduced legislation that would end the ban and replace it with an advertising campaign in the states currently on the travel ban list. The advertisements would promote “acceptance and inclusion for the LGBTQ community.”

But that bill is not at all guaranteed to pass. As the linked report points out, fully ten percent of California’s legislators now identify as some subset of the LGBT spectrum, and they have many allies among their “non-queer” colleagues. One lesbian member of the assembly said she was in favor of the advertising campaign, but not ending the ban. We shall see how this plays out in the days to come, but the state will clearly have to choose between backing down on its pointless posturing or introducing even more changes that demonstrate what a pack of hypocrites they really are.