By Jennifer Carr Allmon
There were more than 7,000 bills filed this legislative session and at the time of this writing (May 10) about 1,950 have passed the first chamber. If a House bill is not out of the House at this point, it’s dead. If a Senate bill is not out of the Senate, it’s incredibly hard to pass. The Texas Catholic Conference of Bishops took public positions of support or opposition on almost 400 bills and only 82 of them are still possible to pass. While the breadth of our work has decreased, the intensity has increased at this critical last push. The final deadline for the House to pass Senate bills is Tuesday, May 21 and the final deadline for the Senate to pass House bills is Wednesday, May 22. After that, it’s conference committee time, where the House and Senate work out their final differences on legislation.
Here’s some general updates on our priority legislation.
Life and Family Life: Our Trigger Ban bills, HB1685, SB2160, and HB2350 did not advance. These bills would have prohibited abortion if the Supreme Court overrules Roe. v. Wade. There are still two other pro-life bills close to passing: HB16 to protect infants born alive after an abortion, and SB22 to protect taxpayers from funding abortion providers with local and state tax money.
Restorative Justice: While the bail reform bills we prioritized—HB1323 and SB628—have not advanced, there is still a chance to pass HB2020 which is out of the House and provide incremental improvements for bail reform. There are several House bills in the Senate that will reform the use of capital punishment, such as HB1030 and HB1139, and we are hopeful they will continue to move.
Education: Conversely, our Student Protection Package bills, SB1231, SB1256, and SB1230, which would protect all Texas students from educator misconduct and abuse in private and public schools in a variety of ways, are moving along in the legislative process. The Legislature also recently voted for HB3, a comprehensive school finance bill we supported. We are happy SB1256 was added to HB3 and hope the conference committee will keep that amendment on the bill.
Social Concerns: HB1483, our “Making Work Pay” bill that will reduce the benefits cliff for working families, has advanced out of the Senate Finance committee and only needs a final vote in the Senate to pass. Your responses to several advocacy requests in the last few weeks on payday lending helped stop HB3899 and HB3292. HB3899 would have prohibited cities from regulating payday lenders and would have stricken more than 40 local ordinances which rein in abusive payday and auto-title lending. HB3292 would have reestablished a predatory lending practice, sale-leasebacks, that was ended advocacy was crucial in ensuring that these bills did not advance. The House Calendars Committee did not set these bills for a vote.
Health and Human Services: HB3459 and HB3896, which enable local hospitals to draw down federal funds for uncompensated care, are moving through the legislative process.
Immigration
Bills to improve the care of unaccompanied children who reside in a facility licensed by the state, which we supported, did not pass either the House or Senate.
Religious Liberty: We had mixed results in this area, with two bills moving forward: SB784, which would prohibit a school district from offering human sexuality instruction unless the school provides the parents/guardians with advance copies, and HB2100, which protects free speech at state facilities, including for religious persons and organizations.
Creation: Bills which we supported and intend to improve responses to and recovery from natural disasters, HB6 and HB807, passed through the House and are before the Senate.
We will continue to be at the Capitol daily to monitor session developments. As always, you can follow us on Twitter and Facebook for the latest updates. God bless!
Jennifer Carr Allmon is executive director of the Texas Catholic Conference of Bishops, the association of the Roman Catholic bishops of Texas.