With the deadline for Texas House lawmakers to consider House bills now passed, hundreds of pieces of legislation are dead––including a few conservative measures the House didn’t get to before midnight Thursday.
House Bill 888 by State Rep. Shelby Slawson (R–Stephenville) would have “provide[d] minors an extension of the statute of limitations until they’re 25 years old, for a claim based in malpractice for providing a puberty-blocking drug, or cross-sex hormones, or performing surgery on a child when the purpose is gender transitioning or reassignment,” explained Slawson in committee.
House Bill 3570 by State Rep. Nate Schatzline (R–Fort Worth) would have required and enforced strict age restrictions for accessing pornographic materials online.
“Research shows that children are more susceptible than adults to addictions and to developmental effects on the brain, and preventing this first exposure to harmful content is just as important as preventing future exposure to more mainstream websites,” said Schatzline in committee.
Similar legislation was sent to the Senate last week, however, keeping hope alive in passing the policy.
House Bill 3502 by State Rep. Jeff Leach (R–Plano) would have required insurance companies to cover beneficiaries’ de-transitioning treatments after gender mutilation procedures. The midnight deadline arrived during this bill, killing it and all of the bills on the calendar following it.
Although the House made sure to approve a massive corporate welfare package and attempted to pass resolutions to legalize casino gambling in Texas, they watered down border security legislation amid the ongoing invasion, and they stillhave yet to pass a ban on child gender mutilation.
The third time could be the charm, however.
The House will take up Senate Bill 14 to ban the gender mutilation of children again on Friday.
Notably, the House spent much of the beginning of session moving slowly, especially in comparison to the Senate.
It took House Speaker Dade Phelan (R–Beaumont) nearly a month to appoint committees in the House, while Patrick appointed Senate committees after less than two weeks. And while the Senate had begun committee hearings in February on priority legislation, the House repeatedly voted to give itself five-day weekends.
While Thursday’s night deadline was a death knell for hundreds of pieces of legislation, the session is not over. The next major deadline is May 23, the final day Senate bills can be heard in the House.
The 88th Legislative Session ends May 29.
