California Attorney General adds Oklahoma to growing travel ban list
Eight other states have already been banned for “discriminatory LGBT laws”
I am so old that I remember when California Attorney General Xavier Becerra was fighting against travel bans.
Let’s get in the Wayback Machine and turn the dial to March, 2017:
California Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra issued a statement Monday saying President Trump’s decision to rescind a travel ban bogged down in court challenges “confirms what we all knew: the travel ban was unconstitutional and un-American.”
Becerra, a social justice warrior and leading general in the War on Trump, relies on one of the tried-and-tested tools of progressive activism: The Double Standard. This week, he issued his own travel ban on that red bastion of traditional values and implemented a travel ban on Oklahoma.
Because Becerra is all about choice, as long as people choose the progressive option.
California’s ban on state-funded travel grew to include a ninth state on Friday with Attorney General Xavier Becerra announcing new restrictions on public employees attending work-related events in Oklahoma.
Since 2017, California has forbidden state employees from traveling to states with laws that California leaders perceive to be discriminatory against gay and transgender people.
Legal Insurrection readers will recall my post noting that state-funded travel to Alabama, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee and Texas had previously been prohibited due to the 2017 law. Such moves impact school sport and academic teams from travel and competition, hindering the ability of our children and young adults to succeed.
California’s real “best and brightest” are collateral damage in this Golden State culture war, spearheaded by Becerra. A good example was when the Citrus College Rocket Owls, one of 60 school teams invited to Alabama to compete in NASA Student Launch Program, had to pull out because of this legislative inanity.
But Becerra can virtue signal at Sacramento cocktail parties and San Francisco banquets . . . isn’t that what’s important?
Oklahomans have not noticed any change since the ban started.
In Oklahoma City, an official with the Oklahoma City Convention and Visitors Bureau said she is unaware of any cancellations in visitor bookings because of the dispute, but that it could be too soon to tell.
“I’ve not seen an effect,” said Sandy Price, vice president of tourism sales. “I’d hate for there to be a downturn because of this.”
Thirty states voted for Trump, so Becerra has only 21 more to go before November.
Interestingly, a lawsuit has been filed claiming that Becerra is ineligible to serve as California’s Attorney General.
According to the suit filed in Sacramento County Superior Court by rival candidate Eric Early, Becerra cannot serve because he was listed as “inactive” from 1991 to 2017 in the state bar. State law requires the attorney general to have been “admitted to practice” before the state Supreme Court for five years before taking office. Becerra was admitted to the bar in 1985.
“For almost 26 straight years, he was an inactive member of the state bar,” Early said in an interview. “He does not have what it takes to be the chief legal officer of the state of California.”
But Becerra’s campaign and Brown’s office noted this all has a familiar ring — a judge 11 years ago threw out a lawsuit claiming Brown was ineligible for the office of Attorney General to which he had just been elected because his bar membership was inactive from 1997 to April 2003.
The judge in that 2007 ruling argued that “admission to practice law is separate from the question of ‘active’ or ‘inactive’ membership in the State Bar,” which she called a “purely ministerial” distinction that affects only member dues.
While it would be great if he were ruled ineligible on a technicality, I hope that Californians are prepared to make him ineligible by voting him out of office in November. Any challenger he faces will have tons of material to work with show Becerra’s #Resistance priorities actually hurt Californians.
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“Legal Insurrection readers will recall my post noting that state-funded travel to Alabama, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee and Texas had previously been prohibited due to the 2017 law.”
Once again, on behalf of my fellow citizens of North Carolina, I express my deep gratitude to California for this travel ban.
“Thirty states voted for Trump, so Becerra has only 21 more to go before November.”
I’d have soiled my armor laughing if you’d said, “so Becerra has only 27 more states to go before November.”
LOL! In retrospect, I wish I had thought to write 27.
Does California ban these states from spending their taxpayer money in California?
Would it not be easier for California to just secede and get it over with?
California: Seceding from the Union – one State at a time.
I just moved from Cincinnati Ohio area to the Tulsa Oklahoma area, This just made my day………..
Welcome to Oklahoma!
However, since I was born, raised, and educated in Michigan (Go Blue!), I do have to mention that I still consider the state you moved from to be a “four letter word”. Get used to “Bedlam”, or the other OSU vs. OU. Michigan – Ohio State or Michigan- Michigan State are mild rivalries compared to Bedlam or the OU-Texas games. But, it’s fun!
Come on, that’s not honest. There is no comparison at all between the CA government restricting official travel by its own employees, and the US government denying people permission to enter the country, throwing them in a cell when they arrive, and then forcing them to board the next plane out. Becerra hasn’t (and can’t) ban even his own employees from traveling anywhere they like on their own time and expense.
+1, Milhouse.
I believe everyone here, excepting yourself, knew she was kidding.
They are both limits on travel created by policy. Reduced to these basic elements, yes, they are comparable. One huge difference is that Trump’s policy is meant to control the travel of non-citizens (as authorized by the Constitution and laws of the United States – nothing new there), while Becerra’s adversely affects State, and other, citizens (such, as pointed out in the article, certain college and university students – I don’t give a rip about California’s state workers). The two mindsets are entirely different. The former is the mindset of the fortress commander, keeping out enemies, the latter is the mindset of the jail keeper.
Not sure, but to my mind there is always the relentlessly aggressive, hydra-headed Commerce Clause lying in wait
Is there any way we can encourage California to restrict all travel from their state? I would pay actual money if California would take back their freak show of a human zoo.
They’ve ruined my state. MAGA quarantine California.
Now if only these States could prohibit Californians from coming.
Oh the Horror!
CA had so many conventions booked into Bugtussle, OK also.
(Bugtussle = birth place of a Democrat Congress critter.)
Has anyone asked Becerra why he provided a fake computer image to Cpaitol police in the Awan case, making him a criminal witness in that case?
Does the comity clause of the Constitution mean nothing.
The what clause? There is no such thing. (Did you perhaps find it lurking in some penumbra of the full faith and credit clause?)
Don’t get snippy. The Comity Clause is Article IV Section 2 Clause of the Constitution:
Case law confers a right unrestricted travel between States from this clause. The clause has also been interpreted to mean that a State cannot discriminate against citizens of another State.
The posters comment is far from frivolous.
This policy does not in any way restrict Californian citizens from traveling wherever they like. Nor does the policy restrict Oklahomans from visiting California, or discriminate against them in any way.
The clause does not require California to do business in Oklahoma if it chooses not to. On the contrary, the right to travel where one wishes must include the right not to travel where one doesn’t wish, and the state of CA is merely exercising that right. If it doesn’t wish to travel to OK, for reasons that seem absurd to us but good to it, it doesn’t have to.
The issues raised by the poster are not frivolous. If they were you would not feel the need to create a mini-brief in your post. Feel free to send me your full brief with case law citations, provided you have a license to practice.
Perhaps other States should grant unsupervised probation or even sentence commutation to felons who agree to move to California and never return.
How would you enforce it, though? Or is your thought that once they see CA they’ll never want to return?
Don’t get snippy. The Comity Clause is Article IV Section 2 Clause 1 which reads
Case law confers a unrestricted travel between States from this clause. It also means that a State cannot discriminate against citizens of another State.
Wrong thread, see above
We were so hoping that not baking wedding cakes would get us on that list, but no, they still keep flocking north (do lemmings flock?).
No, they meringue.
Proposed: A solution to this issue.
Let all college sports playoffs, all multi-state governmental meetings, and all cases where representatives of state governments gather together be held in Alabama, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Oklahoma or Texas.
An excellent idea. UCLA’s women’s softball team is in Oklahoma City at the College World Series. It’s hot and humid there right now. Let’s implement this policy immediately, strand them there, and pass the popcorn.
Hopefully, FSU will put them on the bus home.
They did – 3 to 1.
The topic on the local news is about the OU-UCLA football game in the fall.
https://newsok.com/article/5596737/ou-ucla-game-still-likely-to-be-played-despite-california-ban-on-state-funded-travel-to-oklahoma
So when the Big One hits CA, are they only going to allow emergency, firefighter, and clean up crews in from approved states?
BTW, how hard is it to reduce a State back to Territory status? Probably impossible but sure would be fun.
Great point. Any state that enters bankruptcy is reverted to territorial status until it pays off its debt and is in the black for 20 straight years.
Frankly, keeping officials from the PDRK out of other states is a good thing although the Leftist migration out of their paradise state they made is a problem…. progressive locusts.
Perhaps you should make clear that that’s your suggestion for how the constitution should be changed, not what’s actually the case right now.
Are the residents and governments of states under California state interdict going to be willing to send aid to California if the “Big One” hits? Especially since the Big One is most likely to hit the Left Coast.
Yes, they will. Because they’re not petty.
California is.
If The Big One hits and the other 49 states pour in aid (like generous Americans do after every disaster) I’m willing to bet a certain large fraction of those generous donations flow like water to ‘important people’ outside of the disaster zone with powerful Leftists political roots. Then will come the whining.
Doubt it will impact my state much but what I dislike is the fact that it impacts school activities. My chief worry is that it will reinforce negative stereotypes about our state at a time when these kids are still very impressionable. Stuff like this I feel feeds into the balkanization of the U.S., not a good thing to encourage!
Becerra is an uberlib, but he’s still a politician. His state gov employee travel bans are virtue signaling. He knows it will have little effect. And my cynicism thinks that if California has some major, gotta-have-it deal already ongoing or one comes up in the future, then the Cal state gov employee will simply meet the OK state gov employee or business contact in New Mexico or Colorado, wherever, or they’ll fly the OK people to California, but I assume the ban works in reverse. There are, oh, eight million ways to make sure this is a cost-free signal of virtue.
PS – I once lived in Oklahoma City. They have a dress code including Stetson cowboy hats, longhorn belt buckles, lock-picker cowboy boots, and tight Jordache jeans. I refused and was eventually deported.
The dress code has changed… but, a few years ago, I do remember admiring the back of a cowboy with the hat, pressed shirt, and tight jeans. I was also admiring the open carry of his 9mm. Yes sir, mighty nice…..
Hah. My wife is groaning because it took her a year to domestic thus Texas boy and get him out if tight Levi’s and White Anaconda boots.
https://youtu.be/UDRLZFgEoGw
Bracero will, unfortunately, get re-elected in November;
Becerra’s a putz …
Headline of the (near) future: California Votes to Saw Itself Off From the Civilized Word.
LGBT = transgender (i.e. divergent from gender physical and mental traits, male sex and masculine gender, female sex and feminine gender). The #NoLabels activism has evolved as #TooManyLabels, presumably because L, G, B, and T are not socially compatible. And, of course, diversitists (e.g. racists) hide beneath a thinly veiled prejudice to judge individuals by the color of their skin.
We should probably ban travel to California and other Pro-Choice, selective, opportunist, and politically congruent, states. For one, capital punishment (and, in many cases, torture around one month) of the wholly innocent (e.g. selective-child, recycled-child, life deemed unworthy) is the normalization of an unprecedented violation of human rights. Two, diversity is a judgment or discrimination of individuals by the “color” of their skin. Three, “=” is a politically congruent construct that selectively excludes associations, orientations, etc., that are politically unfavorable or unprofitable.
Progress (i.e. monotonic function) is unqualified and often liberal (i.e. divergent), which creates an illusion of tolerance. It has been one step forward and two steps way back: denial of individual dignity, denial of intrinsic value (and evolution, right to life, etc.).
There used to be a provision the California that members of the teachers union didn’t have to follow a law until it had been ruled on by at least two courts.
I assume the teachers are ignoring this silly travel ban .
This is good. The less Californians to spread the disease of liberalism around the better.
I’d vote for a blockade of California and the refusal to recognize any driver’s license from there as a form of ID.
See how they like them apples.
Speaking as a non-lawyer, no it would not be great to bar him on such a ridiculous technicality that assaults the plain meaning of the English language. It’s possible I wouldn’t agree with him much politically, though I judge issues on a case by case basis, but this? This is just clownish silliness. I imagine that was a wisecrack written largely in jest, but if I don’t stand for principles when it is not convenient, I don’t have any.
A ban that Oklahoma will wear like a badge of honor!
I live in North Texas. I can hear the champagne corks popping in Oklahoma from here.
Brings to mind the old Bob Hope 1976 tour joke…”I’ve just flown in from California, where they’ve just legalized homosexuality. I thought I’d get out before they make it compulsory…”
Comedian as prophet. Go figure.
Wow. A joke like that is a hanging offense these days!