D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser issued an executive order Tuesday banning city-funded travel to Indiana until the state repeals its Religious Freedom Restoration Act — a controversial law Republican Gov. Mike Pence signed last week that many argue could be interpreted to allow businesses to discriminate against gay people in the name of religious freedom.
Bowser joins a growing group of Democratic leaders throughout the country, including the governors of New York and Connecticut and the mayors of Seattle and San Francisco, calling for similar travel bans. On Monday, D.C. Council member David Grosso (I-At Large) urged the mayor to enact such a ban, saying “discrimination has no place in the District of Columbia.”
The mayor’s order, which goes into effect immediately, will stay in place until RFRA is amended or repealed.
“To ensure a consistent voice in policy and practice in the District of Columbia in favor of equal treatment for members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community, no officer or employee of the District of Columbia is authorized to approve any official travel to Indiana until such time that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act is permanently enjoined, repealed or clarified to forbid any construction that would deny public accommodations to persons based on their sexuality or gender identity,” the order reads.
On the same day that Bowser issued the order, D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine moderated a 90-minute panel in Indianapolis at a National Association of Attorneys General region meeting about whether federal agencies should be permitted to preempt state law. Racine’s spokesman, Robert Marus, confirmed that the attorney general arrived in the state Monday and would be leaving Wednesday, saying he already committed to moderate this bipartisan panel and did not want to back out.
Bowser spokesman Michael Czin would not comment on Racine’s visit. Czin said that in the last year D.C. has funded at least two trips to Indiana.
For his part, Pence has defended the law and said the content of it has been “smeared” and misreported. Still, he said Tuesday said that the state would pass legislation to clarify that the law “does not give businesses the right to deny services to anyone,” although he didn’t specify how it would be altered.
In July, then-Mayor Vincent Gray urged residents to boycott spending money in the congressional district of Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.), who opposed D.C.’s marijuana decriminalization law. But Gray didn’t sign an executive order on the matter.