Cal sports cannot travel to Texas, Alabama, Kentucky, South Dakota due LGBTQ discrimination laws

The California Golden Bears have been further restricted from travelling to four more states due to state discrimination laws.

California law AB1887 prohibits state funds or state-sponsored legislation to go to travel to states that have laws that discriminate against the LGBTQ community. This prohibited state employees of the University of California for making trips to states that enacted discriminatory laws, like Kansas, North Carolina, Mississippi and Tennessee. And this will certainly extend to Cal Athletics as well, as well as all public universities in California (like UCLA, Fresno State, San Diego State, San Jose State and more).

The latest state bans have come into effect in Texas, Alabama, South Dakota and Kentucky.

Here’s a quick look at the discriminatory laws that have been put into the books in each of the states.

• Texas governor Greg Abbott signed House Bill 3859, allowing child welfare providers to deny adoptions and other services to children and parents based on “sincerely held religious beliefs”.
• Alabama’s House Bill 24 and South Dakota’s Senate Bill 149 also allows adoption agencies to follow faith-based policies.
• Kentucky Senate Bill 17 allows student-run organizations in colleges and K-12 schools to discriminate against classmates based on sexual orientation or gender identity.

While most of these states are not regular visit spots for Cal sports, Texas is a bit of a quandary for Cal Athletics. The Lone Star state is a huge hotbed for recruiting, and Cal seems to be making a concerted effort on the basketball side to recruit in that state. Cal coaches might have to be creative when it comes to taking recruiting trips to the state.

AB1887 could potentially restrict Cal coaches from visiting Texas on recruiting trips. Expect Cal and UCLA coaches to make Texas recruiting a huge point of contention with donors.

Additionally, Texas hosts a ton of major sporting events, particularly the NCAA Tournament and several major bowl games with Pac-12 tie-ins (like the Alamo Bowl, potentially the playoff).

But Cal and UCLA have already gone on record to state that they will allow teams to participate in postseason events in banned states, so expect these trips to go on unimpeded.

The Cal football team currently has a ton of non-conference scheduled games that will be taking place in these states.

• Cal travels to North Carolina this September for their season opener.
• Cal has a road date to Ole Miss scheduled for 2019.
• Cal will be visiting TCU in 2021.
• Cal has a road trip to Auburn scheduled for 2024.

At the moment, those games are still on (and it’s too late at this point to cancel the North Carolina contest), and all previously scheduled contests are exempt from this ban.

If you would like to donate toward groups that advocate for LGBT rights, consider...

• The Human Rights Campaign, which advocates for equal rights for the LGBT community.
• The ACLU, which fights for civil liberties everywhere, and you can report instances of discriminations at their site.
• The Trans United Fund, the first advocacy organization for the transgender community.
• The Victory Institute, which trains LGBT leaders.
• The Gay Straight Alliance, which provides safety and community for LGBT youth
• The Sylvia Rivera Law Project provides free legal representation for the trans community

More organizations that support the LGBT community can be found at the Daily Dot.)