Hate Crime Study Bill to Recieve Public Hearing

HB 172 by Rep. Marc Veasey is scheduled for public hearing on Tuesday, March 1st at 10:30 am (or whenever the House is finished with its business for the day, which will likely be a little later than 10:30). The bill would require the state to conduct a study on how the James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Act is being used.

The James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Act allows for increased sentences for crimes committed because of the victim's real or perceived "race, color, disability, religion, national origin or ancestry, age, gender, or sexual preference". Over 1,800 potential hate crimes have been reported to the Department of Public Safety since the Texas hate crimes statute went into effect in 2001. Fewer than a dozen have been prosecuted as hate crimes according to Equality Texas.

HB 172 will be heard in the House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee. Veasey filed this bill last session as well (HB 616) and the committee approved it with 8 members for, 1 against and two absent. Unfortunately only two of last session's members are back this session: Chairman Pete Gallego and Wayne Christian. While Gallego is supportive of this bill Christian opposed the creation of a Hate Crimes Statute in the first place so his opposition to anything that might make the Hate Crime statute more effective is virtually guaranteed.

The committee has 7 new members this session: Vice-Chair Hartnett, Aliseda, Burkett, Carter, Davis, Rodriguez and Zedler. Hartnett and Davis both supported the creation of the James Byrd Jr. Hate Crime Act. They both have excellent records of supporting the queer community and it's very likely that both of them will support HB 172. Rodriquez wasn't a member of the House when the Hate Crimes Statute was created, but he has an excellent voting record and will very likely support Veasey's idea. Zedler is an old-school conservative, the kind of person who thinks that non-discrimination policies must in some way work to his disadvantage. I would be shocked if he voted for this bill.

The other three new members, Aliseda, Burkett and Carter, are freshmen, swept in with the teabagger hysteria of the fall. Burkett is a teabagger's teabagger, she was one of only 15 house members to vote against Joe Straus for Speaker (the Teabaggers had encouraged house members to elect a "good Christian" speaker, as opposed to Straus, who is Jewish). The chance of Burkett (or Christian or Zedler, who also voted against Straus) supporting HB 172 is very slim. Aliseda and Carter's lack of experience (or stunning display of antisemitism) makes their vote hard to predict.

In a November 14th Fort Worth Star Telegram article Veasey was not optimistic about HB 172's chances:

"I'm going to try it, but quite frankly it's not going anywhere," Veasey said. "A lot of these folks that got elected were elected on opposition to the president and probably feel that being for anything pro-civil rights would hurt them in their political careers."

Looking at the make-up of this committee it seems more than likely his prophesy will come true.

------------------------------

If you would like to contact the members of the Criminal Jurisprudence committee and ask for their support the contact information is below.

Pete Gallego -Chair
(512) 463-0566
(512) 236-9408 Fax
pete.gallego@house.state.tx.us

Will Hartnett - Vice Chair
(512) 463-0576
(512) 463-7827 Fax
will.hartnett@house.state.tx.us

Jose Aliseda
(512) 463-0645
(512) 463-0559 FAX
Jose.Aliseda@house.state.tx.us

Cindy Burkett
(512) 463-0464
(512) 463-9295 Fax
Cindy.Burkett@house.state.tx.us

Stefani Carter
(512) 463-0454
(512) 463-1121 Fax
Stefani.Carter@house.state.tx.us

Wayne Christian
(877) 839-2709
(512) 463-5896 Fax
Wayne.Christian@house.state.tx.us

Yvonne Davis
(512) 463-0598
(512) 463-2297 Fax
Yvonne.Davis@house.state.tx.us

Eddie Rodriguez
(512) 463-0674
(512) 463-0314 Fax
Eddie.Rodriguez@house.state.tx.us

Bill Zedler
(512) 463-0374
(512) 463-0364 Fax
Bill.Zedler@house.state.tx.us

House Committee Assignments

Texas House Speaker Joe Straus has finally announced the committee assignments for the 82nd Texas House. As I predicted last month the partisan break down of the committee chairs roughly reflects the distribution of party control in the House with 11 Democratic chairs and 25 Republicans (not including the 4 select and joint committee chairs, all republicans).

House committees that queer Texans will want to watch very carefully:

Public Education - will get the anti-bullying bills. Chairman Rob Eissler scheduled the hearing for HB 1323 (last sessions anti-bullying bill) very late last session, but he did schedule a hearing and the committee eventually voted to send the bill to the floor for a vote of the whole House. Unfortunately, time ran out last session (more info on HB 1323). Rep. Strama, whose HB 224 is expected to be the water bearer for anti-bullying bills, is on the committee this session.

Public Health - will get HB 405, which would allow same-sex parents to get accurate birth certificates for their children. Chairwoman Lois Kolkhorst was visibly moved by testimony last session on this bill, lets hope that causes her to schedule it for an early hearing.

Criminal Jurisprudence - will get HB 604, the repeal of Texas's unconstitutional sodomy law and HB 172, the study of the effectiveness of the Texas Hate Crimes Act. Chairman Gallego has a solid record of voting in the best interest of queer Texans, but repealing the unconstitutional sodomy law, however common-sense, is going to a hard sell. Plus, with virulent homophobes Wayne Christian, Bill Zedler and Will Hartnett it seems unlikely that common sense will beat out bigotry. The Hate Crimes study has a better chance, it made it out of committee last session, but it's hard to predict what will happen this session.

Insurance - will get HB 208 prohibiting insurance companies from discriminating on the basis and sexual orientation or gender identity and expression. Chairman Smithee hasn't let this bill through in past sessions and I'd be shocked if he lets it through this session. Smithee takes every chance he can get to hurt queer Texans, he's not likely to pass this chance up either.

State Affairs - will get HB 665, which would prohibit employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity and expression. This bill, or a version of it, has been filed every session for over a decade, and it never gets a hearing. While new Chairman Byron Cook is an immense improvement over old Chairman Burt Solomons it's unlikely that this bill will go anywhere.

Now that we have committees bills are going to start moving left and right. The 82nd regular session of the Texas Legislature is finally getting going!

HB 604: Repeal the State Sodomy Law

HB 604 by Jessica Farrar (D-Houston) would remove the crime of "homosexual conduct" from Texas' Penal Code as well as several rules based on that law that require Texas school children to be taught that "Homosexuality is not a valid lifestyle choice".

You may recall that in 2004 the Supreme Court of the United States declared the Texas sodomy law (which is Penal Code 21.06) unconstitutional in Lawrence v. Texas. What many people do not realize is that the law, although now unenforceable, is still on the books. While it might seem a simple matter of housekeeping to remove it thus far most state lawmakers have seemed too afraid of being accused of being "pro-sodomy" to do anything about it.

Last session Rep. Garnet Coleman (D-Houston) filed this exact bill (word for word) (HB 3028). It was sent to the Criminal Jurisprudence Committee which referred it to a sub committee. When a committee has a large number of bills to consider the chair may, at their discretion, appoint sub committees - which usually look at groups of bills on similar topics and then make recommendations to the whole committee.

The Chair of the Criminal Jurisprudence committee last session was Pete Gallego who has a solid record of voting for the best interest of the LGBT community. Gallego referred HB 3028 to a subcommittee - who then did nothing with it.

It's tempting to blame the subcommittee (which did include virulent homophobes Wayne Christian and Debbie Riddle) and it's tempting to blame Gallego for referring it to subcommittee, but the real culprit is the calendar.

The legislature meets for 140 days every other year. In that 140 days all of the business of the state must be completed. Anything left undone on day 141 must wait another two years. In addition there are many deadlines along the way. One deadline is the 60th day of the session: the last day to file new bills - which in 2009 fell on March 14. HB 3028 was filed just four days before the deadline, on March 10. After a bill is filed it must be read on the House floor and referred to committee, because of the shear volume of bills this takes a few days. HB 3028 was read and referred on March 17.

But it's not like HB 3028 was the only bill the Criminal Jurisprudence committee had to consider. By this point in the session there were hundreds of bills waiting in the committee for the chair to refer to subcommittee. Chairman Gallego referred HB 3028 on March 30, which is actually pretty fast in legislative terms. By this time another major deadline was looming, the 120th day of the session on May 14, which was the last day for bills to be considered on the House floor.

Between the subcommittee and the House floor were several additional steps the bill would have to surmount to meet the May 14th deadline: hearing in subcommittee - report by subcommittee to committee - hearing in committee - vote in committee - committee report filed with "calendar" committee (which decides the order bills will be considered on the floor) - placement on the House schedule and then waiting in line behind every other bill for consideration on the floor of the House. With only 6 weeks to go before the deadline there was not much point in the subcommittee pursuing the bill, especially not with all the work on other bills that lay before them.

Which is why I'm happy to see that Farrar has taken over this bill and decided to file it today, on the 2nd day of the session. Getting a bill towards the front of the line is a huge step in getting it passed.

It's still by no means a sure thing, there are at least 37 incumbent members of the House who have historically voted against anything that is good for the queer community, and with 34 first-time representatives in the 82nd legislature it's hard to predict how bills will do. There is hope, however, that this year this tiny little bit of housekeeping may finally be accomplished.

Straus Wins GOP Caucus' Speaker Vote

Quorum Report tweets that Speaker Straus has won the Republican caucus vote for Speaker with 70 out of 100 votes (for more information on the unorthodox practice of taking a caucus vote for House Speaker see Legislative Queery's post UPDATE: Chisum Remains in Speakers Race).

Unconfirmed reports indicate that the vote was stopped after Straus received 70 votes so it is possible that he actually had much broader support. It is now all but certain that Joe Straus will remain House Speaker for another session. With that settled the next major step in getting the session underway will be the adoption of the House's rules, followed by the appointment of committee chairs by the Speaker.

Straus is a Republican from Bexar County. He has been praised for his even-handed and statesmen-like approach to the Speakership and vilified by the far right for not suppressing moderate and liberal members.

The Texas State Constitution allows the House to adopt its own rules within certain guidelines. The rules generally remain about the same with minor tweaks here and there to address issues that have risen since the last revision. It takes a two-thirds majority of the House to approve the rules.

(With the new Republican super-majority it is possible that an attempt will be made to majorly edit the rules to make it easier to pass conservative legislative priorities. Last session a change in Senate Rules allowed voter suppression legislation that had stalled in previous sessions to sail through the Senate, creating a major crisis when it reached the House and the Democratic leadership slowed House business to a standstill to prevent its passage. It is possible that something similar may be tried in the House this session.)

Once the rules have been adopted the next order of business is for the Speaker to appoint chairs, vice-chairs and members to each of the House's standing committees (the exact number and nature of committees is laid out in the House Rules, so appointments can not be made until the rules are agreed upon). Committee Chairs determine which bills will receive hearings and in what order and which bills will be voted out of committee. A chairpersonship is a very powerful position.

Historically both Democratic and Republican speakers have appointed chairs from both parties with the appointments roughly divided between parties in proportion to that party's seats in the House. If that pattern holds true we should see about 11 Democratic committee chairs and 23 Republicans.

Assuming the committee structure this session is similar to what it's been in the past (which seems likely), most media will be focused on the chairs of the Appropriations, Elections, Redistricting, Border and Intergovernmental Affairs, State Affairs and Ways and Means committees. These committees will likely handle the highest profile issues like the budget, voter suppression, redistricting, and immigration. It is very likely that all of those chairpersonships will go to Republicans.

Most of the legislation that will most directly effect the queer community, however, is likely to go through the Public Education Committee (anti-bullying), the Criminal Jurisprudence Committee (Hate Crime reform) and the Insurance Committee (insurance non-discrimination).

Straus's chairs last session of those committees were: Rob Eissler (R), Public Education; John Smithee (R) - Insurance and Pete Gallego (D) - Criminal Jurisprudence.

Last session Chairman Eissler was fairly supportive of anti-bullying legislation, scheduling it for a hearing and bringing it up for a vote, if a bit late in the session. He supported Straus's bid to remain speaker so it seems likely that he may keep his chairmanship. If so, the public attention on bullying and the early filing of several anti-bullying bills will likely mean an earlier hearing date, and hopefully earlier passage out of committee.

Chairman Smithee is one of what I like to call the "gang of 37" - arch conservatives who have consistently opposed any legislation that improves the lives of queer people - regardless of how minor. If he remains chairman of the House Committee on Insurance it seems unlikely that any effort to outlaw insurance discrimination based on Sexual Orientation or Gender Identity and Expression will succeed.

Smithee is also frequently named as a potential candidate for Speaker. He has supported Straus in the past but his potential as a rival makes it important for Straus to reward his loyalty. It seems almost certain that Smithee will be appointed as a committee chair... but which one? Speaker Straus will want to be certain that the chairs of the high profile committees and the chairs of the procedural committees like Calendars are all Republican stalwarts. He may choose to promote Smithee to a more powerful position. If so, we may have a new chair of Insurance, and a new hope for justice.

Chairman Gallego has a solid record of votes in favor of the best interest of the queer community. Last session his committee sent through Marc Veasey's HB 616 (refiled this session as HB 172) which would study the effectiveness of Texas' current Hate Crimes Law and suggest improvements, but the bill stalled waiting to reach the House floor.

There will be fewer Democratic Chairs this session, there is no getting around that. Gallego may be one of the Democrats who lose their chairmanship. I will be watching this appointment carefully.

Expect to learn the new lineup of committee chairs within a week or so. The outcome is crucial to the eventual success or failure of many vital bills.