There’s been a fair amount of talk lately about states banning travel to other states because of their laws, which states like New York and California deem discriminatory. I’m not here to discuss whether these travel bans are wise or legal in their own states, but whether they are constitutional.
The key fact often overlooked in many of the reports I’ve read and heard is that these are bans on state funded travel. I’ve heard some say this ban is unconstitutional because is violates the Privileges and Immunities clause of Article IV, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution. The Privileges and Immunities clause states:
The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States.
United States Constitution, Article IV, Section 2
The logic seems to be that the right to travel to another state, what our Founding Fathers referred to as the right of expatriation, is a fundamental privilege, and that denying travel for any reason is a violation of the privileges of a citizen of the state. Now if a state were to ban it’s citizens from travel to another state, that would be a violation, but is that what these state travel bans are doing? When I read the acts of New York and California what I found was not a blanket ban on travel to other states, but a ban on state funded travel to other states. As a sovereign entity, the people of each state have the right through their elected representatives to determine what their money will be spent on. If the people of New York and California do not want their tax-payer funds to pay for travel to other states because of a perceived discrimination, that is their right. And if the people of those states think their representatives went too far in issuing their travel bans, it is up to them to contact their representatives to express their opinion and then decide in the next election if they are representing the people of their state well. In short, the travel bans are not a violation of the privileges and immunities clause, but the call by citizens of other states to overturn them is a violation of state sovereignty.
