The governors of New York, Vermont, and Washington, and the mayors of New York, Portland, San Francisco and Seattle have banned all nonessential travel to North Carolina, following Gov. Pat McCrory's signing into law HB2, a measure that eliminates antidiscrimination protections for lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgender people in the state. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has gone a step further, saying he will also try to poach businesses and conventions that no longer want to meet in North Carolina.
New York State's order requires all state agencies, departments, boards, and commissions to review immediately all requests for state-funded or state-sponsored travel to North Carolina, and bars any publicly funded travel that is not essential to the enforcement of state law or public health and safety.
"In New York, we believe that all people -- regardless of their gender identity or sexual orientation -- deserve the same rights and protections under the law," said New York's Gov. Andrew Cuomo in a statement. "Our state has been a beacon of hope and equality for the LGBT community, and we will not stand idly by as misguided legislation replicates the discrimination of the past. As long as there is a law in North Carolina that creates the grounds for discrimination against LGBT people, I am barring nonessential state travel to that state."
In response, McCrory's communications director, Josh Ellis, released a statement claiming hypocrisy on Cuomo's part. "Syracuse [University] is playing in the Final Four in Houston, where voters overwhelmingly rejected a nearly identical bathroom ordinance [allowing transgender people to use restrooms that do not match their birth gender] that was also rejected by the state of North Carolina," said Ellis. "Is Gov. Cuomo going to ask the Syracuse team to boycott the game in Houston? It's total hypocrisy and demagoguery if the governor does not, considering he also visited Cuba, a communist country with a deplorable record of human rights violations." Syracuse is a private institution not under the aegis of Cuomo's actions.