At Least Four States Ban Official Travel to Mississippi

Following the signing of the nation's newest anti-LGBT law, signed Tuesday by Mississippi governor Phil Bryant, governors acted fast to ban official travel to the Magnolia State.

New York governor Andrew Cuomo (pictured) signed an executive order on Wednesday banning all non-essential state travel to Mississippi, requiring all "agencies, departments, boards and commissions to immediately review all requests for state funded or state sponsored travel to the state of Mississippi, and bar any such publicly funded travel that is not essential to the enforcement of state law or public health and safety."

Cuomo -- in addition to several other officials -- recently banned non-essential travel to North Carolina after the Republican governor there signed a law nullifying LGBT-specific anti-discrimination ordinances, banning them in the future, and restricting public restroom use for transgender people.

Mississippi's new law, known as House Bill 1523 or the "Protecting Freedom of Conscience from Government Discrimination Act," will allow businesses, individuals, and religiously affiliated organizations to deny service to LGBT people, single mothers, and others who somehow offend an individual's "sincerely held religious belief or moral conviction." It also directly targets transgender residents, effectively claiming that one's sex assigned at birth is immutable, and will be the only gender recognized by the state. The law takes effect July 1.

While New York was the largest and most influential state to bar travel to Mississippi, Minnesota, Vermont, and Washington state took similar action, with Seattle's out mayor, Ed Murray, also enacting a separate ban for his city's employees.

Corporations are also piling on Mississippi, with major tech, hospitality, and automotive companies urging the repeal of Mississippi's new anti-LGBT law.