Lawmakers don’t let tornadoes stop them from meeting to advance two anti-LGBTQ+ bills

After the Republican governors of Iowa and Idaho signed anti-LGBTQ+ legislation into law this month, conservative lawmakers in Louisiana braved severe weather to quietly advance their own bills on Wednesday.

Even as tornadoes touched down across the state, Louisiana’s House Committee on Education met Wednesday to discuss two pieces of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation, the Louisiana Illuminator reported.

Related: Idaho passes law requiring teachers to misgender trans students

The state’s governor has signed numerous anti-trans laws.

House Bill 121 would ban school employees, including teachers, from “knowingly and intentionally” addressing students “by a name other than the student’s legal name, or a derivative thereof.” This includes a ban on pronouns that align with trans and nonbinary students’ gender identities without the permission of the students’ parents.

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The bill also includes a religious exemption, allowing school employees to misgender and deadname students even if parents give their permission for students to use their preferred names and pronouns. Under the proposed law, supportive parents may request to have their trans or nonbinary kids transferred to another class if a teacher refuses to use their preferred name and pronouns.

House Bill 122, meanwhile, bans classroom discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through 12th grade “in a manner that deviates from state content standards or curricula.” It also bans discussion of those topics “during any extracurricular academic, athletic, or social activity under the jurisdiction of the school or public school governing authority” and bans school employees and guest presenters from discussing their own sexual orientation and gender identity.

Both bills were passed out of committee 9­–3, with Republican state Rep. Barbara Freiberg joining the committee’s two Democrats in opposing the bills.

The Louisiana legislature previously passed both bills last year, but Republicans were unable to override vetoes from then-Gov. John Bel Edwards (D). A representative for current Gov. Jeff Landry (R) reportedly filed a witness card in support of both bills.

The education committee’s meeting was one of only two House Committee meetings that were not canceled Wednesday due to a tornado watch. Severe weather prevented all but four opponents of the bills from testifying, compared to the more than 40 who showed up to oppose the bills last year, the Illuminator reported.

Earlier this month, Iowa enacted its own anti-LGBTQ+ bill. On April 2, Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds signed into law the state’s “Religious Freedom Restoration Act” during a private event hosted by anti-LGBTQ+ Christian organization The Family Leader, Metro Weekly reported. The law, which took effect immediately, prevents the state government from “substantially burden[ing] a person’s exercise of religion… unless the government demonstrates that applying the burden to that person’s exercise of religion is in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest.”

Opponents of the law have described it as a “blank check to discriminate,” allowing people and businesses to circumvent civil rights protections banning discrimination against LGBTQ+ people under Iowa law, according to the Des Moines Register. But it could also have broader implications, as state Rep. Lindsay James (D) explained.  

James said, according to Metro Weekly, that “This bill opens the door for a business to deny services to an LGBTQ+ patron, a landlord to evict a single mom because she’s not married, for a pharmacist to deny a birth control prescription on religious grounds.”

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