Civil & Human Rights

(Update) Hawaii Special Session for SB1 – Hawaii Marriage Equity Act: passed by the Senate, debate in the House

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The Hawaii Senate voted overwhelmingly on Wednesday to approve SB 1, the Hawaii Marriage Equity Act, casting the decision as an important leg in the long march toward equality for gays and lesbians. Senate passes bill (Honolulu Star-Advertiser, subscription required):

EqualThe 20-4 vote sent the bill to the state House, where the House Judiciary and Finance committees will hold a public hearing today. If the committees amend the bill, which is likely in order to win over some House lawmakers worried about the scope of a religious exemption, then the bill would return to the Senate for another review.

The Hawaii House on Thursday embarked on a
marathon hearing where thousands of people would be given a two-minute
platform to offer their opinions. Same-sex marriage testimony attracts thousands (Honolulu Star-Advertiser, subscription required):

The House Judiciary and Finance committees took testimony late into the evening, and House leaders made a commitment to extend the hearing into today and the weekend if necessary to hear all who had signed up
by midnight to speak.

The Hawaii Tribune-Herald reports, Hawaii House hears from public on gay marriage:

More than half of Hawaii’s House lawmakers spent Halloween listening
to public sentiments as they consider legalizing gay marriage, giving
some hints of how they might modify a bill already passed by the Senate.

Meanwhile,
a Republican lawmaker who’s against the bill and has expressed
frustration with the process is hoping to disrupt the special session
with a lawsuit.

State Sen. Bob McDermott told The Associated Press on Thursday that he’s trying to get a judge “to shut this whole thing down.”

[Shades of Missouri GOP senate candidate Todd Akin: if the rape of a woman is "a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down."]

Breaking the GOP filibuster on ENDA

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

There is a conflict in the whip counts being done by the media counting votes to break the GOP filibuster on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) in the Senate — 60 votes are needed for cloture.

Steve Benen accurately reports that when Cory Booker from New Jersey is sworn in on Thursday, all 55 Democratic senators are committed to ending the GOP filibuster. Senate Dems now unanimous on ENDA:

Once Sen.-elect Cory Booker (D-N.J.) is sworn in tomorrow, there
will be 55 members of the Senate Democratic caucus, and all 55 now
support ENDA. To defeat a filibuster and overcome GOP obstructionism,
proponents will need just five votes from Republican senators.

And by my count, they have them. As of Monday, ENDA had four Republican backers – Collins, Kirk, Murkowski, and Hatch – and that was before Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), who supports marriage equality and
has an openly gay son, said he’s inclined to vote for ENDA, too.

So, 4 +1 = 5. And 5 + 55 = 60.

Not so fast. Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) is a bit of a "squish" according to the whip count by Laura Clawson at Daily Kos. ENDA just one vote shy of a filibuster-proof margin in the Senate:

So what's the road to 60, if there is one?

First up is Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), who told reporters
Tuesday that he’s “inclined to back” the proposal. A spokesman later
clarified that Portman “agrees with the underlying principle” of the
measure, but is seeking changes to address concerns with the bill’s
religious liberties provisions. […]

Conservative Alliance of business leaders press Congress for immigratin reform

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The nativist and anti-immigrant forces of the Tea Party were hoping to slow-walk immigration reform to death in the House, but on Tuesday a group of more than 600 leaders from roughly 40 states descended on the Capitol, taking aim at House Republicans who they think could support broad legislation. Business-Conservative Alliance Presses for Immigration Action:

On Tuesday, the group of more than 600 leaders from roughly 40 states
descended on the Capitol for meetings with nearly 150 Republican
lawmakers. They are largely taking aim at House Republicans who they
think could support a broad immigration overhaul, including some sort of
legal status for the 11 million immigrants in the country illegally.
The leaders are urging the lawmakers to take a more proactive role in
pushing immigration legislation to a House vote.

“Our fly-in today is about moving votes on the Hill in support of
reasonable immigration reform,” Randel K. Johnson, the U.S. Chamber of
Commerce’s senior vice president for immigration and labor issues, said
in a conference call with reporters. “I’m confident we’re going to move
the ball forward.”

The event’s sponsors include the Chamber of Commerce; FWD.us, a
political action group founded by Mark Zuckerberg, the creator of
Facebook; the National Immigration Forum; and the Partnership for a New
American Economy, which is led by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New
York, Rupert Murdoch and Bill Marriott Jr.

The effort kicked off in the morning with several panel discussions at
the Chamber of Commerce, including one conversation in which the
Bipartisan Policy Center, a nonprofit based in Washington, unveiled a
new study that found a broad immigration overhaul would help the
economy.

Abortion-inducing drug case may be headed to the U.S. Supreme Court

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The Oklahoma Supreme Court set the stage Tuesday for the U.S. Supreme Court to rule this term on an abortion dispute over whether states may restrict doctors from prescribing the two drugs that are commonly used by women who seek an abortion in the first weeks of their pregnancy. Stage set for Supreme Court to rule on abortion<-inducing drugs:

The Oklahoma case could be the first test of whether the court’s
conservative majority will uphold the new state laws that seek to
strictly regulate legal abortions.

The legislatures in Oklahoma, Texas and several other states have adopted laws that require doctors to follow the Food and Drug Administration’s protocols for the use of “any abortion-inducing drug.” The laws forbid doctors to prescribe medications for “off-label use.”

Sponsors of the laws said
they wanted to protect the health of women. But medical experts and
supporters of abortion rights said the law would effectively ban
medication abortions because the FDA protocol is outdated and conflicts
with current medical practice.

Only one drug — mifepristone or RU-486 — was approved by the FDA in
2000 for inducing early abortions. In the last decade, however,
physicians have regularly prescribed a second drug — misoprostol — to
complete such abortions through nine weeks of a pregnancy. They also
have prescribed RU-486 in much lower dosages.

Federal Court blocks Texas abortion law that Wendy Davis tried to stop

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The United States District Court for the Western District of Texas today issued an opinion striking down two key parts of an abortion restriction that Texas passed earlier this year. Sarah Kliff writes at Wonkblog, Wendy Davis couldn’t stop a Texas abortion law. But a federal court just did.

The decision halts two key provisions of House Bill 2: A requirement
that abortion providers have admitting privileges at a local hospital
and another barring medical abortions.

"The admitting privileges provision of House Bill 2 does not bear a
rational relationship to the legitimate right of the State in preserving
and promoting fetal life or a woman's health and, in any event, places a
substantial obstacle in the path of a woman seeking an abortion of a
nonviable fetus and is thus an undue burden to her," U.S. District Judge
Lee Yeakel wrote in the opinion.

On the medical abortion ban, he wrote, "Although the medication
abortion provisions do not generally place an undue burden on a woman
seeking an abortion, they do if they ban a medication abortion where a
physician determines, in appropriate medical judgment, such a procedure
is necessary for the preservation of the life or health of the mother."

This is a big deal for the 12 Texas abortion providers that filed
suit against the restrictions, which were set to take effect on Oct. 29.