Legislation I Have Written for the Idaho Legislature.
My Bills that passed, and the ones that died.
In the past several years as a regular Idaho citizen I have written several bills, then found legislators to run these bills, and two of my bills passed the Idaho House and Senate and were signed by the governor and became law. Some of my bills though have been killed.
1. The Abortion Human Rights Act, filed 2019, 2020, 2021.
My first bill, filed in 2019 and sponsored then by representatives Heather Scott and John Green, was re-filed in 2020 and 2021. Carried by Heather Scott and Ron Nate in 2021, it quite simply outlaws all abortion in Idaho.
It also asserts the authority of Idaho to ignore the United States federal courts on the subject of murder by abortion. It has not received a hearing in the House because the committee chair of State Affairs has refused to grant it one.
This is one of our systemic problems in the Idaho legislature. Frequently, legislation that is not close to the swamp is denied even a hearing.
To fix that problem I drafted a bill in 2021 that was not filed that would change the policy of whether committee chairmen can wield absolute authority over whether bills even receive a hearing in committee.
2. Bills to Reign In Child Protective Services.
CPS in any state is a well-funded federal racket. The result goes way beyond protecting truly abused and neglected children. In fact, CPS in Idaho alone receives over 24,000 reports a year and does over 10,000 invasive investigations a year of Idaho parents.
Frequently, CPS workers show up at your door with law enforcement and attempt to conduct investigations that go well beyond the scope of the original report. This is because by doing these comprehensive investigations, Idaho receives federal money to enrich the governmental system.
After frequently terrorizing the parents, CPS finds that over 83% of the reports they investigate are completely unsubstantiated.
The system is in need of reform, so I have attempted some common sense minor curtailments to the state power in favor of the people, and every single one of my attempts has been shot down by the establishment.
The first was a bill in 2019. H170 was sponsored by Heather Scott and passed the House 44-23-3 (In Favor, Opposed, Absent) and would have required Child Protection state workers to hand parents a piece of paper informing the parents of their constitutional rights in a CPS investigation.
These rights include not answering questions, not subjecting children to examination, denying CPS admission to a residence, and the right to have an attorney represent the parents in a CPS investigation. This bill was held in the Senate Judiciary and Rules committee after a hearing, where the bill died.
Since H170 was brutally killed, I wrote a different version of H170 in 2020. There is already a requirement in Idaho Code that CPS workers be trained in the constitutional rights of parents, so my bill, H402 modified Idaho Code to list the constitutional rights of parents for which CPS workers should receive training. H402 passed the House 54-15-1, had a hearing in the Senate committee, but was sent to the Senate’s amending order to die (another way to kill a bill!).
Also in 2020, my H403 added a cross reference to the Child Protection Act to refer to a parental rights act that was signed into law in Idaho in 2015. H403 passed the House 55-14-1 but was denied a hearing in senate committee by that committee’s chairman.
In 2020, my H454 was sponsored by Sage Dixon and substantially refined the definition of child neglect in Idaho Code since the previous definition is vague and results in a lot of unsubstantiated CPS investigations. I used recommended language from the Bonner County prosecutor, Louis Marshal, and from the US Department of Health and Human Services. H454 was held in the House Judiciary and Rules committee after a hearing., meaning it got nowhere.
Also in 2020, my H455 changed who is a mandatory reporter to CPS of suspected child abuse, neglect or abandonment. Idaho requires every person to report upon penalty of a misdemeanor, whereas many states use a much more refined list of mandatory reporters and find the refinement results in more accurate reports and fewer unsubstantiated CPS investigations.
I modeled my bill after the language of 25 others states for mandatory reporting, but the bill failed in the House 25-42-3.
3. On Another Subject – Marriage!
I wrote H434 in 2020, and it was sponsored by representatives Bryan Zollinger and Christy Zito. H434 basically replaced marriage licensing with marriage ceremony and recording. In other words, legal marriage was unchanged, except the state’s role would no longer amount to a grant of permission for marriage, since historically marriage licensing was only introduced in the United States to prevent interracial marriages.
Today, there are some couples, who because of their religious convictions, want to be able to marry without a state grant of permission. Some states allow marriage without a “license”, but Idaho Code makes marriage without a license a misdemeanor for the minister conducting the ceremony. H434 had a hearing in the House Judiciary and Rules committee but was held in committee.
4. Finally, a Victory! Parental Rights re: Their Newborns
On parental authority, my H438 passed the Idaho House unanimously and passed the Idaho Senate with only one “no” vote in 2020 and was signed into law by governor Brad Little.
H438 removed the onerous threat of criminal prosecution of parents if they didn’t submit to certain invasive newborn testing within 24 hours of the birth of a child. Priscilla Giddings carried this bill for me.
5. Another Victory! – Campaign Finance
Who knew I could write bills that could pass the legislature unanimously?! My H104, a campaign finance bill, for the 2021 session. Previously Political Action Committees (PACs) were spending significant money on mailings and advertising in what are known as “independent expenditures” (independent of political candidates’ campaigns) to oppose or support certain political candidates.
But the PACs were not required by law to disclose who they were supporting or opposing. H104 required such disclosure and passed the House and the Senate unanimously and was signed into law by the governor. Priscilla Giddings carried this bill for me.
Separately,
I wrote a gun related bill in 2020 to attempt to solve the problem we have at the Festival at Sandpoint related to gun carry restrictions on public property, but we are holding that bill for now until such a time as our gun rights lawsuit is decided by the Idaho Supreme Court.
