LSU Manship School Statehouse Bureau

Published: May 17, 2022

By: Alex Tirado

The House and Governmental Affairs Committee advanced a bill Tuesday that would raise the limit on the amount of money that individuals and political committees can contribute to Louisiana candidates.

House Bill 254, sponsored by Rep. Kyle Green Jr., D-Marrero, would set the campaign contribution limit for donors and small political action committees at $5,000 for all political offices. It would increase the limit to $10,000 for larger PACs with 250 or more members who have contributed at least $50 each.

Current state campaign finance law sets varying donation limits depending on the office a candidate is running for.

Major offices, including statewide elected officials, already have a limit of $5,000, while district offices and other offices that include members of the Legislature have limits of $1,000 to $2,500.

The bill would remove this hierarchical structure of campaign contributions and provide a blanket contribution limit regardless of the office sought by the candidate.

Read more at Louisiana Illuminator

Published: May 16, 2022

By: Piper Hutchinson

BATON ROUGE, La. (LSU Manship School News Service) – The House Committee on Civil Law and Procedure advanced a bill Monday, May 16 that would prohibit discrimination over vaccination or immunity status.

House Bill 252, sponsored by Rep. Kathy Edmonston, R-Gonzales, would amend several existing discrimination statutes, adding vaccination or immunity status as a protected class.

In most statutes, protected classes include race, sex, color, national origin, age, disability as well as occasionally marital status, economic status, family status and creed.

Edmonston’s bill originally applied to all discrimination statutes, including those related to employment, education, lending, health care and insurance. It was amended in committee to not apply to discrimination in housing rental and sales.

The bill passed 9-4 with all of the Republicans in favor and four of the committee’s Democrats opposed.

“Discrimination, as we all know, is not a Louisiana value,” Edmonston said. “It has a negative effect on our economy and our people young and old. They’ll be looking elsewhere for jobs, leaving our state. They believe in equal access for all under the law.”

Read more at KALB

Published: May 13, 2022

By: Ally Kadlubar

Published: May 12, 2022

By: Piper Hutchinson and Allison Kadlubar, LSU Manship School News Service

BATON ROUGE, La. — After a nationwide backlash, Louisiana House Republicans on Thursday amended a bill to remove criminal penalties for women who have abortions, prompting the bill’s author to withdraw the measure.

House Bill 813, sponsored by Rep. Danny McCormick, R-Oil City, would have allowed anyone who received or administered an abortion to be charged with homicide, a crime that is punishable with life in prison.

But even some Republicans who had supported the bill earlier said they realized it went too far in making it a crime for women to have abortions. The amendment, which would have applied the criminal penalties only to abortion providers, passed 65-26.

McCormick opposed the changes and returned the bill to the calendar. It would require a two- thirds vote to bring it back for a floor vote, rendering it likely dead for the session.

The amendment would have made the bill similar to Senate Bill 342 by Sen. Katrina Jackson, D-Monroe, which is still live in the session.

The amendment approved by the House removed portions of McCormick’s bill that criminalized women who receive abortions. It also clarified that the bill would not have applied to ectopic pregnancies, miscarriages or contraceptives that take affect prior to when a pregnancy can be detected. 

Read more at WWL

Published: May 11, 2022

By: Allison Kadlubar

BATON ROUGE, La. (LSU Manship School News Service) – The Senate Health and Welfare Committee on Wednesday, May 11 rejected a House resolution to repeal a state rule requiring COVID vaccines for students.

The committee voted 4-3 against the resolution. Its vote will allow the Louisiana Health Department to add the COVID vaccine to a list of required immunizations for students aged 16 and up.

Rep. Larry Bagley, R-Stonewall, proposed the resolution after several lawmakers brought the rule to his attention.

Read more at KALB

Published: May 10, 2022

By: Liz Ryan

ROCHESTER, N.Y. — Not a day has passed during the past 62 years that Willie Gibson hasn’t thought of Louisiana and the horrific shootings in Monroe that left four of his friends and co-workers dead and a fifth seriously wounded.

Gibson is the last living witness involved in the events that led to the killings by Robert Fuller, who ran a sanitation business and later became a Ku Klux Klan leader.

And in an interview at his home here, Gibson described publicly for the first time how tensions had boiled over on a job site the day before the shootings in 1960, why he was not there when the shootings occurred and how he fled to New York for his own safety.

Gibson, now 80, provided further support for the idea that Fuller’s eldest son William A. Fuller, who had hit Gibson in the face with a shovel the day before, was involved in the shootings.

His account also shows how shoddy the FBI’s efforts to investigate the case many years later were.

During that investigation, which began in 2007, FBI agents mistakenly thought Gibson was the man who had been wounded in the attack. They also did not spend much time looking for him, apparently believing a witness who said Gibson was dead.

Gibson said he believes that Robert Fuller, who claimed he was acting in self-defense, lied about being the lone shooter. Gibson also said that Charles Willis, the man who actually was wounded, told him later that Bill Fuller, then 19, had had a gun and helped shoot the men.

The FBI, which could have learned much from Gibson and other witnesses it failed to find, never investigated Bill Fuller, who was still alive when the bureau closed the case in 2010.

Read more at Louisiana Illuminator

Published: May 5, 2022

By: Allison Kadlubar, LSU Manship School News Service

BATON ROUGE — Lawmakers narrowly rejected a bill Tuesday to ban drivers from using hand-held phones after several amendments, debates and product demonstrations.

The bill would have allowed law enforcement to ticket anyone caught with a cell phone in hand while driving.

“This bill is a wireless cell phone hands-free bill,” the author of the bill, Rep. Mike Huval, R-Breaux Bridge, said. “It does not keep you from using a cell phone when you’re driving. It just requires you to do it in a safe manner.”

The bill failed to pass in the House by a close margin of 48-46. But before the vote, lawmakers discussed the bill in intense debates.

Lawmakers adopted eight amendments to alter the bill since it was first proposed in the House Committee on Transportation, Highways and Public Works on March 14.

Read more at the Daily Advertiser

Published: May 4, 2022

By: Margaret DeLaney, LSU Manship School News Service

BATON ROUGE–The House Committee on Education voted 7-1 Wednesday to advance a bill to prevent transgender females from participating in girls’ sports.

The bill has already passed the Senate and will now proceed to the House floor.

Senate Bill 44, called the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act, states that “teams designated for females are not open to participation by biological males.”

The bill requires that biological sex be determined by the student-athlete’s official birth certificate. The biological sex would then determine whether the athlete participate on a male or female sports team.

“We’ve had a poll done in the state of Louisiana that shows over 80% of Louisianans support protecting women’s sports for biological females,” Sen. Beth Mizell, R-Franklinton, said.

All intercollegiate, interscholastic and intramural teams in any school receiving state funding would be subject to these rules.

Read more at Bossier Press-Tribune

Published: May 3, 2022

By: Piper Hutchinson

BATON ROUGE, La. (LSU Manship School News Service) – The House Committee on Education advanced a bill Tuesday, May 3 that would require behavioral assessments before students could be expelled, placed in an alternative school or suspended.

House Bill 222, sponsored by Rep. C. Denise Marcelle, D-Baton Rouge, would require that a student be administered an assessment chosen by the Louisiana Department of Health before being removed from a school.

The bill also would prevent schools from suspending students for dress code violations and allow schools to use discretion when punishing students in elementary and middle school for possession of a gun or a knife over 2 ½ inches.

Present law requires an automatic suspension for any student to be found in possession of a knife or gun.

The proposal would only allow students in grades K-8 to be suspended if they acted “in a way that is intended to cause significant bodily harm or emotional distress to another person.”

The bill was advanced on a 5-4 vote, with two Republicans, Rep. Barbara Freiberg of Baton Rouge and Rep. Vincent St. Blanc of Franklin, voting in favor of the bill.

Read more at KALB

Published: May 3, 2022

By: Lura Stabiler

BATON ROUGE, La. (LSU Manship School News Service) – A bill that would have prohibited licensed medical professionals from engaging with minors in conversion therapy was met with opposition and voluntarily deferred Tuesday at a House hearing.

The bill defined conversion therapy as practices intended to change a lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer individual’s sexual orientation, gender identity or both. Under the bill, a medical professional who participated in such therapy could have had his or her license revoked.

“We have a large population of vulnerable youth here, and we need to do everything we can to at least let them know that there are people here who care about them,” the bill’s author, Rep. Mandie Landry, D-New Orleans, said at the House Committee on Health and Welfare meeting.

Some conservative and religious groups believe that gay people can be persuaded to change their sexual orientation, while many experts dispute that.

Landry amended her bill, House Bill 605, by providing further definitions about health providers and consent and removing criminal language to satisfy other lawmakers, but that did not stop opposition.

Read more at KALB