Assembly Bill 1887 affects UCLA travel to states with discriminatory laws

A new state law that prohibits the use of state funds for travel to states with anti-LGBT laws has affected plans for academic conferences, collaboration and athletic games at public universities.

Assembly Bill 1887 went into effect at the beginning of 2017 and bars state-funded travel to Kansas, Mississippi, North Carolina and Tennessee. It affects all state agencies, departments and boards, including representatives of the University of California and California State University systems.

The law has some exceptions, such as travel for law enforcement, events scheduled before the law took effect and job training to maintain a license.

It also does not affect travel paid for or reimbursed using non-state funds, which decreases its impact on some activities, like college athletics.

UCLA Athletics spokesperson Josh Rupprecht said in an email that UCLA Athletics does not receive any state funding, but would not schedule future games in states that fail to meet the standards established by the new law.

“UCLA and UCLA Athletics are fully committed to promoting and protecting equity, diversity and inclusion as set forth in the university’s Principles of Community,” Rupprecht said.

UCLA football has a previously scheduled game in Memphis, Tennessee, in September and it will attend to honor its commitments, Rupprecht added.

Though the women’s basketball team had a game in North Carolina in December, no other UCLA sports teams currently have scheduled games in the four states named under the law.

Rupprecht also said if the NCAA assigns a UCLA team to a tournament bracket in a state affected by AB 1887, barring unforeseen circumstances, UCLA will not deny its student-athletes the right to participate in postseason play.

Memphis, Tennessee, will host games for the South Regional in the 2017 NCAA men’s basketball tournament.

According to The Daily Californian, UC Berkeley men’s basketball broke off talks with the University of Kansas to play games at Berkeley and Kansas after the law went into effect.

Some students and faculty also had their travel plans to academic conferences and meetings disrupted.

Jennie Brand, a UCLA sociology professor, said in an email she had considered visiting a professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, with whom she had been collaborating.

“We are just now producing some papers and working more closely together, and it occurred to me that I might want to go visit at some point,” Brand said. “However, now I would not.”

According to the Los Angeles Times, some students from UC Davis, UC Santa Barbara and California State University, Long Beach had planned to attend the National Conference on Undergraduate Research in April at the University of Memphis in Tennessee. One of the students said he would probably not attend the conference because he did not want to seek alternatives for state funding, The California Aggie reported.

The California attorney general’s office maintains a list of states which have passed laws that it determined either discriminate against people based on sexual orientation or gender identity, or provide an exemption to anti-discrimination laws to permit discrimination.