Legislative Update
Friends and Neighbors,
First and foremost, I hope you have a happy Mother's Day on Sunday! Thank you for being engaged and staying up to date by reading my newsletter.
We just completed the second to last week of the 2024 Legislative Session and only have five session days left until we adjourn on May 20. That means that every bill that will be passed must go through conference committee (if there's differing language between the House and Senate) and then be passed again through both bodies before Monday. It’s a tight and busy schedule and will mean more long nights on the House floor next week.
Here is a full and updated breakdown of where every omnibus bill stands as we head into these last few days:
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This week the DFL passed their Human Services, Health, Ag/Commerce/Energy Finance, State Government, Public Safety, and Judiciary Omnibus Bills off the House Floor after many, many hours of debate.
As you can tell by the table above, the House has passed more bills than the Senate. Given the issue with Woodbury Senator Nicole Mitchell, the Senate schedule has been in flux. There is a very good chance many of these bills won’t pass by the May 20th deadline which is just fine with me.
One crucial development that we saw in the Senate yesterday is that the firearm storage mandate and mandatory lost & stolen reporting gun control bills are dead, according to the Senate Majority Leader. As you are aware, the Senate Democrats hold just a 1 seat majority and at least one of the Democrat Senators does not support this gun legislation.
Two other pressing issues are the Uber/Lift preemption and the Sports Betting Bill. Neither of these have agreement between all the parties so we still don’t know what will happen with them. To date, the Democrats continue to exclude Republicans from any input, and again, given the Senator Mitchell situation, it’s not likely they will get much help from us if/when the time comes.
This week House Republicans were also able to restore longstanding religious freedom protections back into the Human Rights Act. This is a huge win for our faith communities and Minnesotans all across the state, but looking ahead into the long term, the upcoming Equal Rights Amendment does not include similar protections, which is one reason that I'll be opposing that measure. More on that later.
Looking ahead to this weekend, Saturday is Statehood Day and the new state flag will officially replace the current flag on that date. Last night House Republicans attempted to declare an urgency and put the new flag up for a vote so that Minnesotans could vote on the flag that represents them, but the motion unfortunately failed on a party-line vote.
Finally, we currently have three bills scheduled for Monday - the most concerning is the Equal Rights Amendment. This ERA language is NOT the ERA of the 70's and goes far beyond the original intent to simply make men and women equal under the eyes of the law. For starters, this language includes NO religious exemptions and would make our religious institutions vulnerable to lawsuits for practicing their sincerely held religious beliefs. The bill was also fast-tracked in the final days of session and only made one committee stop, the Rules Committee, before being passed to the House Floor. Should this bill pass both houses, all Minnesotans will have the opportunity to vote on it in the 2026 general election.
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