Sponsor of ‘Don't Say Gay' expansion plans to revive bill next year
An Alabama lawmaker plans to bring back a bill next year that would prohibit all discussions of gender identity and sexuality during instructional time in public schools.
HB 244 got approval from the House on April 18 and from the Senate Education Policy Committee on May 1. Sen. Donnie Chesteen, R-Geneva, chair of that committee, told Butler after the bill was approved that it is unlikely the Senate will pass it because of the timing and said it needed to be in his committee earlier in the year to have a chance of passage; at the time, there were four days left in the session.
A Democratic filibuster launched in protest of the House's handling of local bills on the last day of the session doomed Butler's bill and many others.
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Butler said he was offended by Chesteen's comment that he should have filed the bill sooner but said both men remedied that after the committee meeting. A message seeking comment from Chesteen was left Thursday afternoon.
Butler filed the bill in February, but it did not go before the House Education Policy Committee until April 3, when the committee held a public hearing. The committee did not approve it until the following week. Butler said he asked Rep. Terri Collins, R-Decatur, chair of the committee, for it to be put on the agenda many times earlier in the session.
'I repeatedly asked for it, and I was assured it was coming, it was coming, it was coming,' he said. 'The chair had other things she said she was dealing with, and I think they waited to deal with several controversial bills at one time.'
A message seeking comment from Collins was left Thursday afternoon.
Butler said next year he plans to have a companion bill in the Senate to improve the bill's chances of passage, 'so we can move on both at the same time, and whoever gets there first wins,' he said.
Butler said Sen. Keith Kelley, R-Anniston, was handling the bill in the Senate and plans to ask him to sponsor the Senate version next year. Kelley said in an interview that he and Butler will be meeting soon about companion bills for next session soon.
'There may be some changes to it, a little bit here, a little bit there,' Kelley said. 'We're planning on bringing that back next year.'
The law currently prohibits such discussions in K-5. Butler's bill would expand it to pre-K-12, which he said would bring it inline with an executive order issued by President Donald Trump in January.
Critics of the bill said at the April 3 public hearing that the legislation is unconstitutional and unnecessary.
A spokesperson for the Southern Poverty Law Center, a consistent critic of the legislation, said in an interview Thursday she was relieved that the bill did not pass but she still had concerns for the legislation next year.
'I'm hoping that it stays dead, and I'm hoping that we don't see a new extension, a revival of it,' Makhayla DesRosiers, state community organizer for the Alabama SPLC office, said.
Many members of the LGBTQ+ community spoke against the bill throughout the legislative process, all with similar concerns: what defines instructional time. DesRosiers said the lack of a definition opens the door for a complete prohibition of discussion.
'If I do extracurricular activities, is it also instructional time? If I'm learning something outside of my regular school hours, is that instructional time?' she asked. 'Who gets to define instructional time?'
Butler has repeatedly said discussions of gender identity and sexuality are only prohibited when a teacher is teaching, but that is not explicit in the legislation.
'People keep saying the student can't do this or that. No, they carry their First Amendment rights with them into the school, and they absolutely can talk to the teacher, the principal, the nurse, the counselor, about whatever they want to talk about,' he said.
Butler said the bill next year would be the original bill that was filed in February. A House amendment this spring removed a part of the bill that would have prohibited teachers from referring to students by their preferred gender if it conflicts with their assigned sex at birth. He said that is because another bill would have done the same thing.
HB 246, sponsored by Rep. Scott Stadthagen, R-Hartselle, would give public educators legal immunity and students immunity from discipline for using a person's legal name and pronouns aligned with their reproductive organs, instead of the name and gender with which they identify. It did not receive final passage either.
DesRosier said that while the people speaking out against the legislation may be small in number, legislation like this is not reflective of the state.
'Just because there is a majority of folks that are proposing and voting on these bills at the State House, that is not reflective of the communities they are elected to represent,' DesRosier said. 'As long as bigotry and hate and human rights violations are proposed and passed, there are always going to be folks that are resisting that.'
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