Legislative Update
Friends and Neighbors,
I hope you and yours have a happy Mother's Day this Sunday! Here at the Capitol we're moving into the final week of the 2024 Legislative Session with just five session days remaining until we adjourn sine die on May 20.
Over the past week, we've seen the majority pass more of their omnibus spending bills off of the house floor, but we've also had a couple of big wins for Minnesotans. Specifically, we were able to restore the longstanding religious protections into the Human Rights Act that the majority intentionally stripped out last year. Additionally, we just learned yesterday from the Senate Majority Leader that the firearm storage mandate and the mandatory lost & stolen reporting bill that criminalizes victims of a crime will NOT advance or come up for a vote in the Senate.
Neither win is final until we adjourn on May 20, but these are encouraging signs nevertheless.
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As for the majority's spending bills, this week the DFL passed their Human Services, Health, Ag/Commerce/Energy Finance, State Government, Public Safety, and Judiciary Omnibus Bills off of the House Floor after many, many hours of debate. I'll go into some detail on these bills here but there is simply too much to cover in one newsletter. If you are interested in any additional details please reach out to me at [email protected]!
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As you can tell by the table above, the Senate has its work cut out for them in the coming days, and they've already been busy amending bills and passing them to the Governor's desk to be signed into law.
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 of which being 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.
The bill on the House Floor Monday authorizes a vote on the 2026 General Election ballot to enshrine the language into the Minnesota Constitution. It's very concerning to me that a bill this serious was fast-tracked and not given the same scrutiny as other bills by going through the committee process.
Town Hall
Please join me for a town hall with Americans for Prosperity just after session ends on May 22!
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