Legislative Alerts
( 18 items )
ACLU Arkansas
2007 Legislative Session
This area contains information and activities on legislation we were involved in during the 2007 Legislative session.
Arkansas 86th General Assembly – Legislative Wrap-Up for 2007
The ACLU of Arkansas can point to a highly successful defense of civil liberties during the 86th General Assembly, which formally adjourned May 1 following an 88-day session.
Entering the session, we expected to be confronted with a multi-front assault on such issues as foster parenting and adoption by gay men and lesbians, undocumented workers, reproductive freedom, and student prayer. Our expectations were met.
The ACLU of Arkansas thanks its many friends inside and outside the General Assembly for their work in seeing that the most egregious bills were defeated outright and that many ominous ones were altered enough to be rendered nearly meaningless. We monitored over forty bills. Here’s a recap on a few of them:
· Gay and Lesbian Foster ban – Win.
Senate Bill 959 would have banned gay people and most unmarried heterosexual couples who live together from adopting or serving as foster parents. This bill likely was the most controversial bill of a legislative session devoted largely to tax relief. It was approved in the Senate after days of contentious debate and was referred to the House Judiciary Committee, where it died. The bill was supposed to “undo” our victory in our case Howard v. Arkansas, decided unanimously in the Arkansas Supreme Court.
Had it been approved, it would have categorically banned lesbian and gay Arkansans from adopting or serving as foster parents, even if they were relatives of the children in question. It also would have banned unmarried heterosexual couples who live together from taking in a child, unless related to the child. This would have prevented godparents or family friends from caring for a child if the parents died or could no longer do so.
Shortly after the bill’s defeat, the Arkansas Family Council said it would consider an effort to get the issue on the November 2008 general election ballot.
Our eternal vigilance on this issue is required.
· Prescription-drug monitoring – Win.
Senate Bill 20 would have required pharmacists to report to the Department of Health and Human Services all prescriptions written for Schedule II-IV drugs (which includes such drugs as Ritalin, used to treat ADD, and Cymbalta, an anti-depressant), along with patient and doctor personal information – an incomprehensible violation of privacy rights. The bill was heavily amended, time and again, to allay some of our concerns. However, we sought an out-and-out defeat and finally succeeded. The bill was approved in the Senate but killed in a House committee hearing at which the ACLU testified.
· Student prayer – Win.
House Bill 2445 would prohibit school officials and employers from interfering with student-led prayers at school, sporting events, graduation ceremonies and other school events. Recent Supreme Court decisions have made it clear that students continue to enjoy the right to pray at school or at school events anywhere and any time in a non-disruptive manner, but that when students “lead” prayers at events over a loud speaker or microphone or in any way that is normally reserved only for school officials and not open to students it amounts to school sponsorship of religion, and is therefore unconstitutional. We worked with the state Department of Education in convincing the bill’s sponsor that such a law would be unconstitutional. The bill was withdrawn.
· Voter ID – Win.
House Bill 2120would have required voters to show a federal or state photo identification card in order to vote. Many people do not have driver’s licenses or any other means of obtaining a state-issued photo ID, particularly the poor, the elderly, people with disabilities, and other minority groups. It has been demonstrated that when this requirement is in place fewer people turn out to vote. The ACLU of Arkansas testified against the bill, as did other groups. It died in the House State Agencies and Governmental Affairs Committee.
· Undocumented workers – Mostly a win.
House Bill 1024 - Mixed victory. This bill was “feel-good” legislation prohibiting the state from doing business with companies that knowingly hire undocumented workers. (The State Procurement Act already prohibits that.) But, House Bill 1024 went a few steps further. It also committed the state, in enforcing the law, to using a federal pilot worker tracking program, “the Basic Pilot Program,” that has been found to be rife with mistakes and incomplete. The object of this program is to ultimately enter every worker in the country -- including citizens -- into a database which could then be matched up with information from the Department of Homeland Security Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to determine their immigration status and work eligibility; everyone applying for a job would have to be screened before hired.
Not only do we disapprove of these kinds of national databases, but we object on the grounds that immigration status can change from day to day, and the likelihood of government employees entering such information into a huge database accurately and in a timely manner makes such a program untenable, considering what’s at stake: a person’s livelihood.
Currently employers must ask every potential employee to provide proof of citizenship, but they are not required to verify it. We succeed in adding many amendments, including the state’s participation in the Basic Pilot program. Nevertheless it’s now Act 157 and, we believe, still subject to challenge, in part because the statute makes it illegal to hire anyone who entered the country illegally, even if they have since obtained legal status. We also object to any measure that intimidates employers so that they are afraid to hire people who “look” like they may be immigrants.
House Bill 2781 – Win. This bill would have required the tracking of state services provided to undocumented workers. The ACLU, of course, opposed this bill. It died in a House committee.
House Bill 2779 - Win. Called the “taxpayer and citizens’ protection act,” the bill would have made it a crime for anyone to harbor, transport, or shelter undocumented workers. That included undocumented workers who came here illegally but who now have legal status. It would have made it a crime for a church or charity to shelter, feed or clothe an undocumented immigrant, even one who’d been abused. It was approved in the House after no small amount of debate, but the ACLU rallied its allies to testify at a surprise meeting on the next to the last day of the legislative session of the Senate Judiciary Committee, where it was defeated.
· Reproductive Rights
Senate Bill 871 – Win. It sought to require a sign at all offices, clinics and facilities that provide abortions stating that no one can force a woman to have an abortion. Such legislation is meaningless, and its intent is only to make doctors appear predatory. The bill died in a Senate committee.
House Bill 2768 – Loss.Similarly, this required such notice as part of the state’s “informed consent” law. . It’s now Act 1605, but we believe it poses no major burdens for doctors or women. If the fear is, as Family Council represented to us, that women are often forced to have abortions by her parents or the baby’s father, we know that every abortion provider is aware of this possibility and will make sure that the woman is obtaining the procedure of her own free will.
· “Cyberbullying” – Mostly a win.
After a lot of work, we were able to get the worst provisions out of House Bill 1072, aimed at prohibiting “cyberbullying," defined as sending harassing messages electronically. This bill was overly broad and certainly unconstitutional in its breadth against free expression by students, even from their homes and elsewhere not school grounds. School officials, under the bill, also could have found almost any text-message, e-mail or blog item to be “disruptive” to the school environment and, thus, punishable. The bill is now Act 115 and, after the many amendments, is harmless, if officials abide by the policy.
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Over the course of the session, at least one lawmaker who had wearied of the ACLU’s untiring opposition to bad bills asked what the organization stood for.
But, contrary, to some lawmakers’ beliefs, the ACLU of Arkansas did support some bills. They included passage of the Equal Rights Amendment of 1972. Unfortunately, after a good head of steam was built in favor of passage; many co-sponsors withdrew their support after a misleading assault by Phyllis Schlafly and others of her ilk.
We supported legislation (Senate Bill847) to make information about emergency contraceptives available at emergency rooms to assault victims. It’s now Act 1576, but it contains a “conscience clause” for an E.R. worker to opt out of providing the information on religious or other grounds. This is a problem because the bill doesn’t require the hospital to provide another employee to relay the information.
We supported an Arkansas effort to “opt out” of the federal legislation aimed at eventually requiring national ID cards. One particular bill, House Bill 2528, expressly seeking that went nowhere. Eventually, both chambers approved two non-binding resolutions. One, Senate Concurrent Resolution 16, asks Arkansas’s U.S. congressional delegation to vote to opt Arkansas out. The other, SCR 22, asks Congress and the Department of Homeland Security to add language to protect civil liberties if the REAL ID is eventually implemented.
