2023 Legislative Session: A Regretful Recap
by Maggie Ballard Nebraskans for Peace Board President
The 108th Nebraska Legislature will go down in history as the session to bring about some of the worst changes that our state has ever seen. We can agree to disagree on the politics around what was passed, but the fact remains that the Speaker and Lieutenant Governor (who serves as the president of the Legislature) chose to ignore the rules that ensure our laws are passed fairly. We’re getting a little ahead of ourselves though, aren’t we? Perhaps I should start back from the beginning.
Every January, the Nebraska Unicameral convenes for either 60 days (a short session, taking place during even-numbered years) or 90 days (a long session during which the state budget must be passed, which takes place during odd-numbered years). This year’s 90 day session began with a bit of excitement in the air that can be compared to the first day of high school or college. There was a mixture of several new or returning freshmen senators, while some were returning for their seventh of eighth years. The Unicameral is officially nonpartisan – meaning that each person works for the agenda of the state, rather than the agenda of their political party. Even so, each senator is known to have an “R” or a “D” next to their name, even if that letter is not displayed anywhere in the Capitol. There was a total of 17 Democrats and 32 Republicans. If you have watched the session in previous years, you know that being outnumbered almost 2:1 does not leave the progressive minded senators powerless. While a simple majority of 25 votes is needed to advance or pass a bill, there is this wild card known as a filibuster, a procedure in a legislative body to prolong debate in order to delay or prevent a decision. Senator Ernie Chambers was the king of filibusters back when he was in office, and once this strategy is implemented, it takes 33 – not 25 – votes needed to advance a bill. Therefore, the minority voice is protected. But only if there are 17 minority voices. 16 will not cut it, and this year’s legislative body was made up of one democrat that sided with conservatives on key issues.
After senators were sworn into office, Committee Chairs were elected by secret ballot and Senator John Arch was unanimously elected to be the Speaker. There was some contention over committee assignments and rules around Points of Personal Privilege (which is fancy talk for taking a moment to make a personal announcement or acknowledgement), but optimists had reason to believe that things could be ironed out and run in their usual, productive fashion. That optimism was short-lived though, once bills started being introduced. As some senators introduced bills to help Nebraskans with issues like food and water, property taxes, education, and criminal justice reform, others focused on controversial issues, some of which seemed to originate from outside Nebraska. Bills that made progressives across the state cringe began making headlines, like expanding the right to carry a weapon without any training or background checks that NFP organized a rally against (LB 77 – Senator Tom Brewer), restricting access to abortion after 6 weeks (LB 626 – Senator Joni Albrecht), making it a crime for minors to be around drag queens (LB 373 – Senator Dave Murman), prohibiting transgender youth from using bathrooms or locker rooms for the gender they identify as, unless it matches the sex they were assigned at birth (LB 575 – Senator Kathleen Kauth) and demanding that Nebraskans prove their citizenship each time they vote (AM 1940 – Senator Julie Slama – to LB 514, as simple Voter ID Bill).
As these “culture wars” began stirring up, the nonpartisan nature of the Legislature started to fade. And then, to top it all off, Senator Kathleen Kauth introduced LB 574, a piece of anti-trans legislation which she named the “Let Them Grow” Act. LB 574 prohibited the use of hormones, puberty blockers, and gender reassignment surgery for transgender minors in Nebraska. The bill was deemed by supporters as a way to prevent children from putting hormones or puberty blockers into their bodies when the long-term effects have not yet been studied, and to prevent children from mutilating their genitals before they become adults. Critics (including Nebraskans for Peace) saw this bill as a means to legislate hatred; it would prevent transgender youth from becoming more comfortable in their own skin – allowing them to match their outsides with their insides. Opponents to LB 574 also asserted that gender-altering surgeries are already rare amongst minors, and the hormones and puberty blockers LB 574 sought to ban were FDA approved, safe, rarely regretted, and a way to help transgender youth become more at peace with who they truly are. To our dismay, LB 574 had 22 co-signers.
Another dismaying event involved committee bill hearings. This year, they were not run fairly. A core tenant of our unicameral system is the committee process. Because we only have one house – the Senate – the people are considered the second house. Every bill is required to have a hearing and citizens, or the Second House, are free to come sit in front of the committee members and offer up their 3 - 5 minutes of testimony, be it personal story, professional experience, or one’s opinion. This system has rules and norms that are followed year after year. But norms were shattered this year in some committees. The hearing on LB 574 in the Health and Human Services Committee was one example: the hearing room, an overflow room and the hallways were filled with people who came to testify on the bill. These were transgender adults, transgender teens, gay people, straight people, parents of transgender kids, social workers, pediatricians, nurses, other healthcare providers, and civil rights advocates. When Senator Hansen, Chair of the HHS committee decided to limit the total number of testifiers to 3 hours per side, lines of people who had been there all day were told to go home, unable to speak to those who represent them in government. The hearing was over by 8:00 p.m. (Hearings are allowed to go to 11:59, as has happened before on controversial bills). But Senator Hansen didn’t want to stay that late. So, the people crying, angry, sad, exhausted, people were sent away. The Second House was silenced. Needless to say, LB 574 came out of committee.
Senator Machaela Cavanaugh was not having any of it. Early on in the session, as soon as she heard LB 574 was introduced, she got on her microphone and told her colleagues, everyone watching the Legislature at home, and the entire world that she would “burn the session to the ground” before she would let such a bill pass. She vowed to filibuster every single bill that came up for debate, which would use up so much time that the body would only have enough time left to pass a small handful of bills. And she was true to her word. Even through having strep throat, Senator Machaela Cavanaugh filibustered every single bill that arrived on the floor. Every. Single. One. After a few weeks, she had company. Senator Megan Hunt disclosed on the floor that her own son was transgender. She and several of her colleagues joined Senator Cavanaugh in filibustering bills.
Even those that agreed with Senator Machaela Cavanaugh could be frustrated that stopping one bad bill came at the expense of not being able to pass a number of good bills. Remember though: Senator Cavanaugh left her colleagues with an alternative from the beginning: she encouraged them to take their name off of “that piece of poop” legislation and agree to not let this bill become the priority of the entire body. Unfortunately, too many of her colleagues refused to budge. Some thought that the puberty blockers and hormones would be okay, but the surgery (which, I remind you, hardly any minors ever receive) should be banned. A compromise could not be reached, and instead of letting the bill fail, the Speaker gave Senator Kauth a time out to strategize how she could keep the legislation alive. She introduced a compromise that would take hormones and puberty blockers out of the bill’s language, but she turned around and asked her colleagues to oppose that amendment.
In the midst of all of this controversy over one bill that was sucking up all the oxygen of the Unicameral, the Speaker and several other senators were tired of not getting anything done. They decided to overcome Senator Cavanaugh’s strategy by changing the rules and allowing numerous bills to be combined into one, as long as their topics were related. (The ladder is important to note: each bill must be confined to a single subject.) This allowed more than a small handful of bills to pass.
Meanwhile, LB 626, the bill to ban abortions after 6 weeks into a pregnancy, was unable to overcome a filibuster. Senator Merv Riepe had had a change of heart and decided that 6 weeks was too close to being a total abortion ban. He proposed they amend the bill to banning after 12 weeks. No agreement was reached. His amendment failed, as did LB 626.
On May 16th, Senator Ben Hansen introduced an amendment to LB 574, the “Let Them Grow” Act. His amendment had nothing to do with transgender care. Instead, it was an amendment to ensure that fetuses could grow into babies. This was an obvious attempt to get some form of an abortion ban to pass. The only problem is that these two subjects have nothing to do with each other. What they have in common is that they were both WANTED by a majority of the body.
Many of us can empathize with wanting to go to any length to pass a bill into law if we are passionate enough about it. That’s why we have rules, to ensure that no matter how much we want something done, it has to happen the right way.
There were many motions made by a number of senators that attempted to make the legislative body play by those rules. There was a motion to return LB 574’s amendment to committee for a hearing. There was a motion to call into question the germaneness of the amendment. There was another motion to return LB 574 to the Judiciary Committee because it included criminal penalties, and criminal penalties fall under the Judiciary Committee’s scope of expertise. None of these motions passed. Neither Speaker Arch, who had a reputation for being conservative but fair, nor Lt. Governor Kelly directed the Legislature to play by the rules.
On Friday, May 19th, LB 574 made it to final reading. A vote was taken to end the filibuster and it passed. A vote was taken on the bill itself and it passed. An overflowing rotunda full of opponents, including several members of Nebraskans for Peace, fell silent. Tears flowed and people clung to each other in defeat. The governor proudly signed it into law. And every single Nebraskan that knows and loves a transgender person has had a harder time sleeping at night.
May 19th was a hard day to be a Nebraskan. It was a hard day to stand for peace. The attack on transgender people’s rights will not be the last attack Nebraskans for Peace fights. Every one of us that is able to do something to stop these attacks, must do something. We must come together, vote, canvas, protest, and demand better from our Unicameral. May we never have another session that disgraces our state like this one has done.
The 108th Nebraska Legislature will go down in history as the session to bring about some of the worst changes that our state has ever seen. We can agree to disagree on the politics around what was passed, but the fact remains that the Speaker and Lieutenant Governor (who serves as the president of the Legislature) chose to ignore the rules that ensure our laws are passed fairly. We’re getting a little ahead of ourselves though, aren’t we? Perhaps I should start back from the beginning.
Every January, the Nebraska Unicameral convenes for either 60 days (a short session, taking place during even-numbered years) or 90 days (a long session during which the state budget must be passed, which takes place during odd-numbered years). This year’s 90 day session began with a bit of excitement in the air that can be compared to the first day of high school or college. There was a mixture of several new or returning freshmen senators, while some were returning for their seventh of eighth years. The Unicameral is officially nonpartisan – meaning that each person works for the agenda of the state, rather than the agenda of their political party. Even so, each senator is known to have an “R” or a “D” next to their name, even if that letter is not displayed anywhere in the Capitol. There was a total of 17 Democrats and 32 Republicans. If you have watched the session in previous years, you know that being outnumbered almost 2:1 does not leave the progressive minded senators powerless. While a simple majority of 25 votes is needed to advance or pass a bill, there is this wild card known as a filibuster, a procedure in a legislative body to prolong debate in order to delay or prevent a decision. Senator Ernie Chambers was the king of filibusters back when he was in office, and once this strategy is implemented, it takes 33 – not 25 – votes needed to advance a bill. Therefore, the minority voice is protected. But only if there are 17 minority voices. 16 will not cut it, and this year’s legislative body was made up of one democrat that sided with conservatives on key issues.
After senators were sworn into office, Committee Chairs were elected by secret ballot and Senator John Arch was unanimously elected to be the Speaker. There was some contention over committee assignments and rules around Points of Personal Privilege (which is fancy talk for taking a moment to make a personal announcement or acknowledgement), but optimists had reason to believe that things could be ironed out and run in their usual, productive fashion. That optimism was short-lived though, once bills started being introduced. As some senators introduced bills to help Nebraskans with issues like food and water, property taxes, education, and criminal justice reform, others focused on controversial issues, some of which seemed to originate from outside Nebraska. Bills that made progressives across the state cringe began making headlines, like expanding the right to carry a weapon without any training or background checks that NFP organized a rally against (LB 77 – Senator Tom Brewer), restricting access to abortion after 6 weeks (LB 626 – Senator Joni Albrecht), making it a crime for minors to be around drag queens (LB 373 – Senator Dave Murman), prohibiting transgender youth from using bathrooms or locker rooms for the gender they identify as, unless it matches the sex they were assigned at birth (LB 575 – Senator Kathleen Kauth) and demanding that Nebraskans prove their citizenship each time they vote (AM 1940 – Senator Julie Slama – to LB 514, as simple Voter ID Bill).
As these “culture wars” began stirring up, the nonpartisan nature of the Legislature started to fade. And then, to top it all off, Senator Kathleen Kauth introduced LB 574, a piece of anti-trans legislation which she named the “Let Them Grow” Act. LB 574 prohibited the use of hormones, puberty blockers, and gender reassignment surgery for transgender minors in Nebraska. The bill was deemed by supporters as a way to prevent children from putting hormones or puberty blockers into their bodies when the long-term effects have not yet been studied, and to prevent children from mutilating their genitals before they become adults. Critics (including Nebraskans for Peace) saw this bill as a means to legislate hatred; it would prevent transgender youth from becoming more comfortable in their own skin – allowing them to match their outsides with their insides. Opponents to LB 574 also asserted that gender-altering surgeries are already rare amongst minors, and the hormones and puberty blockers LB 574 sought to ban were FDA approved, safe, rarely regretted, and a way to help transgender youth become more at peace with who they truly are. To our dismay, LB 574 had 22 co-signers.
Another dismaying event involved committee bill hearings. This year, they were not run fairly. A core tenant of our unicameral system is the committee process. Because we only have one house – the Senate – the people are considered the second house. Every bill is required to have a hearing and citizens, or the Second House, are free to come sit in front of the committee members and offer up their 3 - 5 minutes of testimony, be it personal story, professional experience, or one’s opinion. This system has rules and norms that are followed year after year. But norms were shattered this year in some committees. The hearing on LB 574 in the Health and Human Services Committee was one example: the hearing room, an overflow room and the hallways were filled with people who came to testify on the bill. These were transgender adults, transgender teens, gay people, straight people, parents of transgender kids, social workers, pediatricians, nurses, other healthcare providers, and civil rights advocates. When Senator Hansen, Chair of the HHS committee decided to limit the total number of testifiers to 3 hours per side, lines of people who had been there all day were told to go home, unable to speak to those who represent them in government. The hearing was over by 8:00 p.m. (Hearings are allowed to go to 11:59, as has happened before on controversial bills). But Senator Hansen didn’t want to stay that late. So, the people crying, angry, sad, exhausted, people were sent away. The Second House was silenced. Needless to say, LB 574 came out of committee.
Senator Machaela Cavanaugh was not having any of it. Early on in the session, as soon as she heard LB 574 was introduced, she got on her microphone and told her colleagues, everyone watching the Legislature at home, and the entire world that she would “burn the session to the ground” before she would let such a bill pass. She vowed to filibuster every single bill that came up for debate, which would use up so much time that the body would only have enough time left to pass a small handful of bills. And she was true to her word. Even through having strep throat, Senator Machaela Cavanaugh filibustered every single bill that arrived on the floor. Every. Single. One. After a few weeks, she had company. Senator Megan Hunt disclosed on the floor that her own son was transgender. She and several of her colleagues joined Senator Cavanaugh in filibustering bills.
Even those that agreed with Senator Machaela Cavanaugh could be frustrated that stopping one bad bill came at the expense of not being able to pass a number of good bills. Remember though: Senator Cavanaugh left her colleagues with an alternative from the beginning: she encouraged them to take their name off of “that piece of poop” legislation and agree to not let this bill become the priority of the entire body. Unfortunately, too many of her colleagues refused to budge. Some thought that the puberty blockers and hormones would be okay, but the surgery (which, I remind you, hardly any minors ever receive) should be banned. A compromise could not be reached, and instead of letting the bill fail, the Speaker gave Senator Kauth a time out to strategize how she could keep the legislation alive. She introduced a compromise that would take hormones and puberty blockers out of the bill’s language, but she turned around and asked her colleagues to oppose that amendment.
In the midst of all of this controversy over one bill that was sucking up all the oxygen of the Unicameral, the Speaker and several other senators were tired of not getting anything done. They decided to overcome Senator Cavanaugh’s strategy by changing the rules and allowing numerous bills to be combined into one, as long as their topics were related. (The ladder is important to note: each bill must be confined to a single subject.) This allowed more than a small handful of bills to pass.
Meanwhile, LB 626, the bill to ban abortions after 6 weeks into a pregnancy, was unable to overcome a filibuster. Senator Merv Riepe had had a change of heart and decided that 6 weeks was too close to being a total abortion ban. He proposed they amend the bill to banning after 12 weeks. No agreement was reached. His amendment failed, as did LB 626.
On May 16th, Senator Ben Hansen introduced an amendment to LB 574, the “Let Them Grow” Act. His amendment had nothing to do with transgender care. Instead, it was an amendment to ensure that fetuses could grow into babies. This was an obvious attempt to get some form of an abortion ban to pass. The only problem is that these two subjects have nothing to do with each other. What they have in common is that they were both WANTED by a majority of the body.
Many of us can empathize with wanting to go to any length to pass a bill into law if we are passionate enough about it. That’s why we have rules, to ensure that no matter how much we want something done, it has to happen the right way.
There were many motions made by a number of senators that attempted to make the legislative body play by those rules. There was a motion to return LB 574’s amendment to committee for a hearing. There was a motion to call into question the germaneness of the amendment. There was another motion to return LB 574 to the Judiciary Committee because it included criminal penalties, and criminal penalties fall under the Judiciary Committee’s scope of expertise. None of these motions passed. Neither Speaker Arch, who had a reputation for being conservative but fair, nor Lt. Governor Kelly directed the Legislature to play by the rules.
On Friday, May 19th, LB 574 made it to final reading. A vote was taken to end the filibuster and it passed. A vote was taken on the bill itself and it passed. An overflowing rotunda full of opponents, including several members of Nebraskans for Peace, fell silent. Tears flowed and people clung to each other in defeat. The governor proudly signed it into law. And every single Nebraskan that knows and loves a transgender person has had a harder time sleeping at night.
May 19th was a hard day to be a Nebraskan. It was a hard day to stand for peace. The attack on transgender people’s rights will not be the last attack Nebraskans for Peace fights. Every one of us that is able to do something to stop these attacks, must do something. We must come together, vote, canvas, protest, and demand better from our Unicameral. May we never have another session that disgraces our state like this one has done.
