Californians are no longer allowed to travel to Iowa on the state’s dime.
Attorney General Xavier Becerra announced this week that California had added Iowa to its travel ban, which applies to 11 other states including Alabama, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, and Texas. Why? Because each of these states has endorsed gender identity-based discrimination, according to California politicos.
Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds signed a budget bill last week that includes a provision allowing local governments and state agencies to opt out of funding gender reassignment surgeries with taxpayer dollars, including Medicaid funds. The provision technically amends the state’s Civil Rights Act to ensure taxpayers are not required to fund medically unnecessary surgeries.
The amendment is akin to discrimination, according to a 2016 California law that prohibits public employees and university students from traveling to states that refuse to guarantee protections against gender-based discrimination.
“California has taken an unambiguous stand against discrimination and government actions that would enable it,” Becerra said in a statement, according to the Sacramento Bee.
Unambiguous indeed. Clearly, California plans on making the business of other states its own. Never mind that it has serious problems within its own four borders it has yet to resolve, such as a worsening homelessness crisis and a potential economic downturn resulting largely from policies made inside the state. But those bigots over there in Iowa? California has a solution for that: Don’t go there!
In reality, California’s travel ban doesn’t amount to much. Public colleges still travel to states subject to the ban for athletic events, and the law itself offers no mechanism for enforcement. Still, the law should trouble everyone outside of, well, California.
The state’s all-knowing bureaucrats have no problem using the power of the law to insert themselves into the affairs of other states. This is a precedent, and it’s an important one that bears long-term consequences for federalism and state authority. Today, it’s prohibiting state-funded travel. But what’s next? Will California withhold interstate trade? Will it take Iowa to federal court in an attempt to force Iowa’s legislature to change the law?
California’s travel ban proves that it can and will use political and financial pressure to dictate the everyday lives of not just Californians, but Iowans, Texans, and every other American. Live in a way with which California disagrees, spend your money in a way it considers discriminatory, and speak against policies it supports and California’s politicos might just come for you, too.
