PRESS RELEASE from the Senate DFL Caucus
Committee to Review Bills Barred from Senate Hearings
​Sen. Little to Chair; Sen. Franzen, Vice Chair; 

St. Paul, MN –
“These bills could save many lives and tax dollars,” Sen. Little (DFL-Lakeville) previewed, “But they haven’t been given a single senate hearing. Our democracy isn’t supposed to work this way- it’s the worst kind of partisanship.” The fictitious ‘Senate Committee on Banned Bills’ will hold a very real hearing on April 1stat 9:00am in 1100 Minnesota Senate Building to review a variety of legislation that have been refused committee hearings in the senate. This committee hearing will be open to the public and people are encouraged to attend.

“These bills have huge public support and are common sense ideas,” Sen. Little continued, “They’ve been banned for completely crass partisan reasons; because they are targeting certain seats, and don’t want to give certain people any achievements to campaign with. But the senate can’t make good decisions if major options aren’t even on the table. Partisan games like this are rigging our democracy, and blocking bills that voters really want.”
  
The Senate Committee on Banned Bills (COBB) is slated to review the proposed bills, take testimony from citizens and expert witnesses, and debate the merits of each policy.  A wide array of bills will be introduced during the hearing, including legislation dealing with paid family medical leave, gun safety, and the health care provider tax [agenda and complete list of members and bills below].  

Until late yesterday, Senate Majority Leader Paul Gazelka had declared that he would “do everything in his power” to prevent new gun legislation. Early this morning the Star Tribune reported that Leader Gazelka had changed position and agreed to allow a hearing on certain gun safety measures if the house passed the same bills first. 

“I am encouraged by Sen. Gazelka’s apparent willingness to hear my background check and red flag bills,” Sen. Latz (DFL-St. Louis Park) commented, “But his announcement comes only two days before the committee deadline. As of yet, these hearings have not been scheduled, so this April first hearing will make sure that the views of the majority of Minnesotans are heard in the Senate.”  

“Reforms like universal background checks are supported by over 87% of all Minnesota gun owners,” Sen. Latz noted, “These issues deserve to be heard in the senate.”  

For other senators, their motivations center around key issues, such as restoring the rights of felons after they have completed their sentences. “Restoring voting rights after people have done their time just makes sense,” Sen. Champion (DFL-Minneapolis) explained, “How can you expect people to feel they have a chance in life if we keep them on the outside forever? Restoring their right to vote isn’t enough, but it’s an important step toward making them a productive, whole person again, after they’re released. That would be life changing for thousands of people.”  

For Sen. Susan Kent (DFL-Woodbury), Paid Family and Medical Leave is a test of Minnesota’s moral compass, “Whether we assist or abandon families during a medical crisis says a lot about who we are as a society. Forcing people to choose between a day’s pay or caring for a dying parent is a moral failure for Minnesota. The public is overwhelmingly behind paid family and medical leave. And many businesses want it because they can’t provide paid leave if their competitors don’t have to provide it too. If businesses and families want paid medical leave, why won’t the senate even give this bill a hearing? It’s a disgrace.”  

All the senate members of the Committee on Banned Bills share the view that the normal democratic process requires hearings on all major options. “We are not talking about small, obscure, radical bills here,” Sen. Franzen (DFL-Edina) noted, “These are consensus policies on major issues. These proposals deserve a hearing, and most importantly, the citizens who have poured their energy into these bills deserve to be heard.”  

The fate of these bills will be uncertain even after the Committee on Banned Bills hears them.  “We hope this hearing puts pressure on committee chairs to hear these bills,” Sen. Little noted, “But either way, we want voters to know about these crucial issues so they can make up their own minds. We can’t let crass partisanship prevent voters from learning about key issues.” 

Sen. Little believes advocates for these issues have been left with no alternative, “If the committee chairs won’t do the right thing, then we have to. They’ve left millions of Minnesotans with no voice and no hope on some of the biggest issues facing families today.”  

Senate Committee on Banned Bills Agenda for Monday, April 1: 

1. SF 434 – Latz – Firearms transfers and private party firearms transfers criminal background checks requirement 
2. SF 399 – Hayden – MinnesotaCare provider tax repeal
3. SF 1012 – Torres Ray – Increase Teachers of Color Act strengthening and appropriation
4. SF 1060 – Kent – Paid family, pregnancy, bonding, and applicant’s serious medical condition benefits establishment; employment leaves authorization and regulation; data classification authorization and appropriation  
5. SF 856 – Champion – Right to vote restoration upon incarceration release or sentencing imposition; county attorney voter registration and eligibility investigation obligation repeal
6. SF 208 – Pappas – Resolution memorializing Congress to remove the deadline for ratification of the equal rights amendment by the states SF 200 – Cohen – Constitutional amendment for gender equality under the law

Senate Committee on Banned Bills Membership:

• Sen. Matt Little – Chair
• Sen. Melisa Franzen – Vice Chair
• Sen. Karla Bigham
• Sen. Bobby Joe Champion
• Sen. Steve Cwodzinski
• Sen. Nick Frentz
• Sen. Jeff Hayden
• Sen. Jason Isaacson 
• Sen. Susan Kent
• Sen. Sandy Pappas
• Sen. Patricia Torres Ray

Senator Matt Little represents Senate District 58, which covers Lakeville, Farmington, a small slice of Northfield and more than a dozen townships and small communities including Empire, Vermillion, New Trier and Douglas.

Learn more about Sen. Little.

By: Kevin Featherly | Minnesota Lawyer   February 7, 2019 
​
Two bills pushing women’s Equal Rights Amendments in both the state and U.S. constitutions are on the march in the Minnesota House.

Both face skepticism from GOP lawmakers and a few constitutional experts, but for now they are on an upward trajectory.

House File 13 comes from Rep. Mary Kunesh-Podein, DFL-New Brighton. It has 26 DFL co-sponsors and cleared a committee hurdle on Jan. 24, when it passed out of House Government Operations with a unanimous voice vote. It is scheduled for a hearing at State Government Finance Feb. 7.

In an interview, Kunesh-Podein said her ERA bill is a mirror image of the 1970s-vintage federal ERA amendment, which fell three states short of ratification at the time of its final 1982 deadline.

The other Minnesota House bill, House File 71 from Rep. Rena Moran, DFL-St. Paul, is a resolution asking Congress to eliminate that deadline and kick-start passage of the federal ERA. Moran’s bill went directly from Government Operations to the general register, to await a still-unscheduled House floor vote.

Kunesh-Podein’s bill would place on Minnesota’s 2020 election ballot a constitutional amendment stating that women and men have equal rights under the law. If passed, it would go into effect in January 2021.

“Under this legislative majority and with the awareness of gender inequity, now is the time to do this and get it done,” Kunesh-Podein said in an interview.

The Jan. 24 vote moved her bill to Ways and Means, and from there to the Feb. 7 State Government Finance hearing. But its unanimity might be slightly misleading. The Jan. 24 vote came after the rejection of a GOP amendment, which aimed to prevent a state ERA from being used to fuel legal challenges to anti-abortion state statutes.

“In the broad scope of your bill and your push, I fully support it,” said Rep. Nick Zerwas, R-Elk River, who first offered then withdrew the amendment. “My concern is as a Catholic pro-lifer who doesn’t want to support something that, down the road, is used to justify expansion of abortion access in Minnesota.”

At a Jan. 24 House State Government Operations hearing, MCCL Legislative Director Andrea Rau expresses opposition to a state Equal Rights Amendment bill. The legislation’s author, Rep. Mary Kunesh-Podein, DFL-New Brighton, sits to her left. (Staff photo: Kevin Featherly)
Andrea Rau, legislative director for the anti-abortion group MCCL, asserted that her group’s members are strong on women’s rights. “However, equal rights amendments have a history of discriminating against less developed humans—those yet to be born,” she said.

Rau cited a recent Pennsylvania lawsuit in which abortion-rights advocates used the state’s ERA to justify a constitutional challenge against a ban on state-financed abortions. “Attempts to invalidate pro-life laws continue based on ERAs,” Rau said.

David Schultz, the Hamline University political science professor, said Republicans might have a point. He noted that in 1979, future U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg argued that reproductive rights should be guaranteed by the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution, rather than a judicially constructed right to privacy.

An ERA would raise gender to a protected status equivalent to race, which conceivably could make it a powerful constitutional tool for abortion-rights proponents, Schultz said.
“I think that Republicans rightly perceive that’s part of what the agenda is,” he said.
Kunesh-Podein, however, told lawmakers that her bill has nothing to do with abortion rights. She declined to accept the Zerwas amendment, she said, to keep it “a clean bill.”
In the interview, Kunesh-Podein said the Zerwas amendment, had it passed, would have been fatal to her bill. “We would have had to kill the bill right here because we can’t let that go forward with that amendment on there,” she said.

Though it likely won’t stop anything, the Zerwas amendment likely is not dead. “I think there will be robust discussion on the floor about the amendment,” he told committee members on Jan. 24.

Senate factor
Taken in isolation, of course, little of that matters. House Democrats have a 75-59 majority and can pass pretty much any bill that suits their mood. But House Republican opposition appears to be reflected in the Senate, where it matters a great deal.

Sen. Warren Limmer, R-Maple Grove, is chair of the Senate Judiciary committee, through which both of the DFL House bills’ companions would have to pass.

In a brief interview on Wednesday afternoon, he said neither bill is scheduled to be heard in his committee. He said he plans to leave it up to Senate Majority Leader Paul Gazelka, R-Nisswa, to decide whether they should move forward in his committee.

But even lacking a Senate hearing and testimony, there already are signals that Senate Republicans share their House counterparts’ concerns.

Senate File 200, from Sen. Dick Cohen, DFL-St Paul, is the companion to the Kunesh-Podein bill. It once had three Republican sponsors — Sen. Julie Rosen, R-Vernon Center; Sen. Carla Nelson, R-Rochester; and Sen. Scott Jensen, R-Chaska. All have since had their names stricken from that bill.

The same is true for the Moran bill’s Senate companion, Senate File 208 from Sen. Sandy Pappas, DFL-St. Paul. It also boasted three GOP co-sponsors. As of Jan. 22, all had their names removed.

“That might have been some strong influence from MCCL,” Kunesh-Podein said when asked about the Senate defections.

Both bills also have many supporters. At the Jan. 24 Government Operations hearing, for instance, so many supportive testifiers were present that not all could be heard.

Lisa Stratton, former University of Minnesota law school instructor and co-founder of the nonprofit Gender Justice, was among them. “This standard would simply place gender equality on the same footing as racial and religious equality,” she testified.

She quoted the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who in 2011 said that while the U.S. constitution does not require discrimination against women, neither does it prohibit discrimination.

“Enshrining the basic principle of gender equality in the Minnesota Constitution,” she said, “would make it clear that the citizens of this state expect its courts to apply a very high level of scrutiny to laws that create or reinforce gender disparities.”

Stratton added: “It would make it clear that such laws have to be justified by a compelling state interest.”

More skepticism
Abortion is not the only cause for skepticism about the bills.  Rep. Pat Garofalo, R-Farmington, in a Jan. 25 interview, said the ERA is constitutionally superfluous. “The 14th Amendment covers this, period,” he said. “It’s already in law. It’s already in the Constitution.”
Mary Jane Morrison, a Minnesota Constitution expert and retired academic, wonders whether a constitutional amendment is the right answer to the problems supporters want solved.

Various testifiers suggested that a state ERA would enshrine women’s equality in state law, helping to curb gender wage disparities, lessen the double whammy of racial and gender discrimination faced by women of color and help prevent domestic abuse, among other issues.

Morrison said that while all those problems are real and serious, their root causes are not totally clear. Without having a firm grasp on causation, she said, a constitutional amendment may be the wrong remedy — because it is not certain what it would solve.
Morrison makes no firm stance against enshrining the ERA into the state constitution. She is just not sure it is the right answer — at least not yet.

“If we have already exhausted the non-constitutional efforts to solve the problems, then I am ready for a constitutional clause that has teeth in it — with a department behind it that is charged with enforcement,” Morrison said.
​
However, she added, “My general view is that the constitution needs to be the place of last resort, after we found out that we have no legislative and cultural means of solving the problem.”

Minnesota ERA Working Its Way Through the MN House
St. Paul, MN, February 6, 2019 -

The Minnesota Equal Rights Amendment (HF13 Kunesh-Podein) cleared the House State Government Finance committee this morning by a 9-4 roll call vote.
 
The legislation would place the amendment on the statewide ballot in 2020 asking Minnesotans to add the following language “Equality under the law shall not be abridged or denied on account of gender” to the state constitution.
 
“Having these fourteen words on the ballot will give Minnesotans the opportunity to choose whether or not they want to live in a state where all people are protected equally by our state’s legal system.” said M. Kathleen Murphy, Vice-President of ERA Minnesota, who appeared before the committee today. “Now is the time to take the next step towards a more equal Minnesota.”
 
Legislation supporting the amendment has been introduced every year since 1983. This is the first year it has passed out of committee. ERA Minnesota (ERAmn), the organization advocating for the amendment, expects the legislation to pass the House this legislative session.
 
The equal rights amendment is about creating opportunities for everyone regardless of their gender. A few things the Minnesota ERA is intended to do are:
 

• Provide certainty and stability to Minnesota’s legal system by setting a clear legal standard that everyone, regardless of their gender, is protected equally under the law.  

 

• Help address serious issues in Minnesota like the gender violence, workplace discrimination, and the wage gap.  

 

• Create a more open society where people have the opportunity to choose their path regardless of their gender.

 
The bill will be heard next in the Judiciary Finance and Civil Law committee.

To be on the statewide ballot in 2020 the proposed Constitutional amendment needs a simple majority in both the Minnesota House and Senate.
 
Lisa Stratton, a legal expert in gender discrimination, testified that enshrining gender equality in Minnesota’s Constitution would make it clear to the courts that they need to apply the highest level of scrutiny to laws that create or reinforce gender disparities. It would also make clear that such laws must be justified by a compelling state interest and the law under review must be found to be necessary. This standard would place gender equality on the same footing as racial and religious equality.
 
Adding an equal protection clause to the Constitution is another step forward in Minnesota’s long journey towards becoming a place that embraces the diversity and uniqueness of its people. As Jettie Ann Hill, a 26-year state employee and member of the MN Association of Professional Employees (MAPE) said, “Now is the time for Minnesota to begin closing the gap and recognizing the intersection between race and gender by adding the ERA to the state Constitution.”
 
The amendment would have a positive benefit to Minnesota’s economy and help to reduce the pay gap between men and women. Hill continued, “It is well documented that Black, Latino, American Indian, and other women of color in Minnesota face complex economic inequalities, and more training and education does not lead to the same economic payoff as men.”
 
Some of the most powerful testimony was given by MatasCastillo who spoke to her experience as a survivor of sexual assault in the military and to being recognized as the first woman to hold positions traditionally held by men.
 
“I was proud to blaze a trail that others could follow, but if I am honest, I never asked to serve as an exemplar of my gender, but only to serve. They call that a privilege, but it would be a far greater privilege to live in a world where women did not need to prove the worth of their gender to earn the respect given as a matter of course to men.”
 
Pheng Thao, the Statewide Coordinator for Men and Masculine Folks Network, spoke to the amendment’s ability to help change our culture for the better, highlighting the tragic fact that one in three women and girls in Minnesota experience gender violence in their lifetime. Thao went on to say, “We live in a culture where we are still teaching our boys and young men rigid ideas about manhood – dominant, strong-willed, emotionless – and that women and girls are there to serve their needs.”

PRESS Release:  FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:   January 24, 2019
Contact:   Heather Allison (651) 214-1702 heather@eramn.org
                    Betty Folliard  (612) 868-3511 betty.folliard@gmail.com
                
The ERA is in the House
                   
ST PAUL, MINN – ERA Minnesota (ERA MN www.eramn.org) is thrilled to announce that for the first time in decades the Minnesota House will hold hearings on Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) bills today -- January 24th, 2019 before the Government Operations Committee, SOB Room 10 at 9:45 AM.
 
There are two ERA bills to be heard in the Government Operations Committee that day: first (HF13), a Minnesota State ERA amendment to the state constitution bill chief-authored by Representative Mary Kunesh-Podein; and second (HF71), is a Resolution to Congress to remove the deadline on the federal ERA chief-authored by Representative Rena Moran. Both bills have companion bills introduced today in the Senate: the MN State ERA SF200 (Cohen) and the ERA Resolution to Congress SF208 (Pappas).
 
HF13/SF200 -- the constitutional amendment -- would  provide for gender equality under the law and proposes a constitutional amendment that, if passed by both bodies of the Minnesota Legislature, would be added to the ballot in the 2020 general election for the voters to decide on the outcome. 2020 has special significance because it coincides with the 100th Anniversary of Women’s Suffrage – the year women achieved the right to vote.
 
“This state ERA is long overdue,” says Heather Allison, President of ERAMN. “25 states already have passed ERA’s into their state constitutions – the oldest having been written over 140 years ago.”
 
HF71/SF208 is a resolution memorializing Congress to remove the “June 30th 1982” deadline  so that once the 38th state ratifies the ERA it can be ratified into the U.S. Constitution.
 
“95% of Minnesotans believe everyone should have equal rights,” said Betty Folliard, Founder of ERAMN. “We’re grateful to the Legislature for this opportunity to make equal legal.”
 
ERA Minnesota is a coalition of thousands of activists and organizations from every corner of the state dedicated to embedding an Equal Rights Amendment into our state and national constitutions to ensure that all citizens are protected from discrimination on the basis of sex.
 
“Pay inequity, workplace gender discrimination, domestic violence, rape & campus sexual assault, female poverty, pregnancy discrimination, and laws that unjustly affect men will all be helped by an ERA;” says M. Kathleen Murphy, VP of ERAMN & Founder of CAFE Coalition; “that’s why the ERA is so badly needed.”

ERA Minnesota is a coalition of thousands of activists and organizations from every corner of the state dedicated to embedding an Equal Rights Amendment into our state and national constitutions to ensure that all citizens are protected from discrimination on the basis of sex.