Alabama top stories in brief
- An Alabama House committee approved a bill last Wednesday that would make it a felony for most individuals and organizations to assist voters filling out absentee ballots. The bill would also make the distribution or collection of ballots illegal. There has been an exception added to the bill for those with disabilities who need assistance.
- The Alabama House of Representatives advanced legislation previously approved in committee that would ban transgender athletes from competing on the sports team of their identifying gender at two or four year colleges. A similar bill barring transgender women or girls from competing on teams at federally supported schools and colleges was passed by the house at the federal level, but is not expected to pass through the democratic-led Senate.
- So far six people have been charged with reckless murder in the birthday party shooting that occurred at a birthday party in Dadeville, Alabama. The shooting killed four people and left 32 others injured.
- A new house bill would allow law enforcement officers and employees to request that personally identifying information be redacted from public documents prior to disclosure. This would not prevent names of officers and employees from being included on documents. The sponsor for the bill, Rep. Shane Stringer, R-Citronelle, has said that the reason for the bill is to protect officers and employees from doxing, a practice where private or identifying information is published online with malicious intent.
Alabama divisive concepts bill is approved by house committee
The House State Government Committee held a public hearing earlier this month to hear arguments regarding HB7, a bill that would ban teaching of specific divisive concepts in Alabama Public Schools.
The bill was sponsored by Rep. Ed Oliver, R-Dadeville, who sponsored the bill last year when it failed to pass because legislators ran out of time. Oliver said that similar bills had already been passed by several states and bills were pending in several others.
“In the state of Alabama, and this is polling data that we paid for as a party, it shows that the single most important issue is protecting our children from woke policies,” said Oliver.
Oliver said that for Republicans it was top concern among voters according to the polling data and it was the third most important concern for democratic voters.
The poll Oliver referenced shows that a total of 36% of respondents consider “protecting children from woke policies” to be the most important issue to them personally. Among the parties, 49% of Republicans selected it as their most important issue and 15% of Democrats. The poll does not offer any examples or explain what is meant by woke policies.
There were speakers both for and against the bill, though members of the opposition far outweighed the number of those who supported the bill. Two members of the public, John Eidsmoe, the Senior Counsel and Resident Scholar at the Foundation of Moral Law and Becky Gerritson, the executive director for Eagle Forum of Alabama, spoke in favor of HB7. There were seven individuals that spoke against the bill, including representatives from Project Say Something, the Elmore County chapter of the NAACP and the Foundation of Individual Rights and Expression.
Supporters of HB7 connected the divisive concepts defined in the bill to Critical Race Theory.
“Critical race theory is a college-level theory; however, concepts and tenets are being taught in K-12,” Gerritson said.
The Alabama State Board of Education passed a resolution that banned the teaching of CRT in K-12 schools back in 2021. There have been no reported cases of CRT being taught to students in Alabama.
Gerritson referenced “privilege walks” as an example of how CRT is influencing schools.
Privilege walks are a teaching tool used in some diversity and equity training. They ask a series of questions and have participants step forward if the answer to the question is yes. The idea is to illustrate advantages that individuals have over each other that they did not have direct influence over.
While Gerritson brought up privilege walks, she did not offer any examples of such activities taking place in Alabama schools.
Tyler Coward, the senior legislative council at FIRE, voiced concerns that HB7 violated freedom of speech on college campuses. Coward referenced the campus free speech bill that Alabama passed in 2019 and told the legislature that they should be proud of the bill and reminded everyone that FIRE was a non-partisan group and worked with the Eagle Forum to pass that bill.
“One of the things that law says is that all public institutions of higher education should strive to ensure the fullest degree of intellectual freedom and free expression and recognize that it is not the proper role to shield individuals from speech that is protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Including ideas and opinions the individuals find unwelcome, disagreeable or offensive,” Coward said.
Coward also responded to Oliver’s statement that this type of legislation had been passed in other states. He explained that while other states had passed similar legislation, only Florida had enacted a law that included provisions towards higher education, and that the bill had been enjoined by a federal court.
“Alabama should not follow the path of Florida and invite costly litigation to the state,” Coward said.
After the public hearing concluded, the legislators were allowed to give their own comments.
Rep. Kelvin Lawrence, D-Hayneville, brought up the racial makeup of the speakers that voiced their opinions on the bill.
“You had not one Black person to stand in support of this legislation, although you did have several whites to stand in opposition to this legislation,” said Rep. Kelvin Lawrence. “…we talk about divisive concepts, but what we’re doing here with HB7, it’s very very divisive.”
His colleague, Rep. Prince Chestnut, D-Selma, agreed.
“It’s divisive that not a single white person on this committee is going to vote against this bill,” said Prince. “That’s divisive.”
The committee voted 9-3 in favor of the bill. All three Black members of the committee voted against the bill.
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