DALLAS — Phillip Jones, whose job it is to court visitors to this city, spent months warning anyone who would listen: Economic pain will follow if Texas lawmakers pass laws seen as hostile to gay and transgender people.
But after Texas approved a law that critics said might keep people, on the basis of sexual orientation, from adopting children or serving as foster parents, even Mr. Jones was surprised at part of the fallout: a ban by California on taxpayer-funded travel to Texas.
“Never in a million years,” Mr. Jones, the chief executive of VisitDallas, said, weeks after California broadened its travel restrictions to include eight states. “It was not even a factor in any of our discussions that California would ban travel to Texas.”
For a handful of liberal states, bans on government travel have become political pressure points during the country’s debate about gay and transgender rights. Beyond California, officials from New York to Minnesota to Washington State have pursued the bans in response to laws in states that they contend open the door to discrimination.
