[eluser]slowgary[/eluser]
This problem is a figment of your imagination. JavaScript (and thus, jQuery) shouldn't really care about the URL as it mainly just manipulates the DOM. It shouldn't matter.
Does it happen in all browsers? Are you using the tabs in conjunction with ajax? Can you post a link to where you're experiencing this issue? Have you recently suffered any sort of head trauma? I have, smacked my head on a really big regex. Hurt really really bad.