English
Korean
Spanish
AUSTIN A second, 30-day special session of the 87th Legislature opened August 7 without a quorum in the House of Representatives as at least two dozen Democrats from that chamber remained in Washington, D.C. to avoid debate on an election reform bill. Despite an idle House, Texas Senators began passing legislation within hours of opening the second session. Those bills can advance quickly to the House once a quorum returns.
“So, it’s one of these things where the Senate very well could have the originating chamber work done as early as Friday or Saturday. So, the question becomes, ‘What’s going to go on in the House?’” Derek Cohen, vice president of policy at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, told the TEXAN.
Cohen spoke with the TEXAN Monday, Aug. 9, as some Democrats began returning to Austin but the House was still about five members shy of a 100-member quorum.
Distractions
Democrat defectors, a surge in COVID-19 infections just as school is due to open, and visceral partisan disagreements surrounding the election reform bill threaten to overshadow legislation SBTC members want Texas lawmakers to address.
Cindy Asmussen, advisor to the Texas Ethics and Religious Liberty Committee, urges Christians to press Gov. Greg Abbott, Speaker of the House Dade Phelan and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick to add bills to the call and challenge others.
Review the TERLC special session report (PDF) >>
Only the governor can add bills to a special session agenda, also referred to as the call. Asmussen believes that tactic prompted Abbott to add to the call Senate Bill 2. The legislation requires public school students to compete in interscholastic competitions based on their biological sex. Nine states have enacted similar statutes. If passed in Texas, the law would protect female athletes from having to compete against male athletes who identify as female.
On Tuesday, Aug. 9, the Senate approved the bill after its first reading. The chamber scheduled a second reading and vote Aug. 10.
Bills of concern include the Family Violence Prevention Act which requires schools to instruct middle-and-high school students about dating and home violence, and child abuse. Asmussen argues these topics are covered in other areas of instruction and the new curriculum could draw from sexually explicit Comprehensive Sex Education material.
The bill, SB 9, passed out of committee and will go to the Senate floor for a vote. TERLC opposes the legislation.
Senate Bill 123 passed during the regular session and is due to become law Sept. 1. It requires the State Board of Education to “integrate positive character traits and personal skills, rather than positive character traits, into the essential knowledge and skills adopted for kindergarten through grade 12, as appropriate.”
Asmussen admits this bill passed under the TERLC radar. After a more thorough analysis, she said the law incorporates problematic Social and Emotion Learning and ideological notions of “equity,” not equality into classroom instruction and calls for social action.
Corrective measures can be taken to defund or alter the bill, Asmussen said. But that action has to be put on the call.
Other key legislation not on the call is a version of House Bill 166 authored by Rep. Matt Krause, R- Fort Worth. The bill bans so-called gender modification treatment for minors. No long-term research has examined the practice’s toll on the body. The treatment includes chemically blocking the onset of natural puberty and then administering hormones of the opposite sex which causes a child’s body to develop physical characteristics of the opposite sex.
The American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Foundation prescribe gender modification as the only treatment for gender dysphoria. The organizations advocate banning mental health counseling as a means of treatment. In several states it is illegal to provide such counseling to minors.
Critics like Matt Rinaldi, chairman of the Texas Republican Party, call gender modification of minors “child abuse.” And, on Monday, the Texas GOP joined the TERLC in demanding the state ban the practice.
“Every day we wait more Texas children are irreversibly harmed. Rep. Matt Krause has a bill with enough co-authors to pass the Texas House and others are sure to attract majority support on this important issue. I ask Governor Abbott to add it to the call for the second special session,” said Rinaldi.
Abbott has indicated he is considering adding this bill to the call.
Cohen said such politically-charged legislation could end up being a “double-edged sword.”
“Those kinds of issues address a certain need. But I think there’s also a reticence to give the Democrats something that they – at least in the eyes of their base – could stay in DC for. Because now it went from, “We’re in here for voting rights. Or, now, it’s voting rights and trans rights,” he said.
The Democrats twice fled the U.S. Capitol to avoid debate and passage of the Election Integrity bill, SB 1. They did so first in the waning days of the regular session that ended May 31 and, again, just days after the start of the first Special Session that ended Aug. 6.
Republicans hold a majority in both chambers, guaranteeing passage of the bill. But, with enough quorum-busting House Democrats on the lamb, the lower chamber has no quorum. With no quorum, bills idle.
The election bill is not the only item left to die on the special session agenda Cohen said.
Bills on the governor’s call are, mostly, holdovers from the 87th Legislature’s Regular Session. They include the voter reform bill; bail reform; Title X and border security funding; Senate Bill 2 protecting female athletes; and extra funding for teacher retirements, plus, the bills TERLC wants added to the call. Abbott could also include legislation addressing the rise in COVID-19 infections. (Some cities are mounting a legal challenge to Abbott’s executive order prohibiting mask mandates. Challengers to the order say it is necessary, especially as public schools open for in-person learning.)
“You have things that are not advancing, that are bipartisan, such as the bail reform bill that [passed] 27 to 2 in the Senate. That’s quite a quite a spread. And, also, the 13th check for retired teachers. These are things that are largely apolitical, or at the very least, largely bipartisan. And, you know, this is the will of the state that is not being enacted,” Cohen said.
The Democrats’ quorum-busting walkout is not unprecedented. They did it in 2003 and 2009 to avoid passage of new district boundaries. Data from 2020 Census is due to be released this month and some states, like Texas, must redraw voting districts to accommodate population changes. Growth in central and north Texas earned the state two new seats in U.S. House of Representatives.
Abbott must call another special session, perhaps in October, to redraw those lines.
Since Republicans control both chambers of the Texas Legislature, those lines could favor the GOP – and prompt another democratic walkout.
But will they?
Cohen doesn’t expect the current rogue representatives to face backlash in their home districts but he said polling indicates the quorum-busting is “incredibly unpopular.”
