Arkansas legislators approve bathroom-bill study

Convict-exoneration idea also floated

Legislation to restrict how transgender people use public restrooms quietly stalled toward the end of this year's regular legislative session, only to reappear Wednesday.

The so-called bathroom bill was among several pieces of legislation that lawmakers on the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to study until the Legislature meets in its next regular session in 2019.

The other proposals included one to create an avenue for convicted criminals to seek exoneration.

A previous attempt to present a bathroom bill before the committee drew protesters to the state Capitol, and it was not considered again before the session closed.

The legislation, which would require that people use public bathrooms corresponding to the gender on their birth certificates, was labeled by opponents as discriminatory.

Supporters said it promoted public safety, especially of children, from sexual predators who claim to identify as the opposite sex.

The Judiciary Committee vice chairman, Sen. Linda Collins-Smith, R-Pocahontas, sponsored this year's bathroom bill, Senate Bill 774, and the interim-study proposal adopted Wednesday.

She said studying the legislation would allow for more public hearings and debates, which she said had previously been "cut short."

A debate during the session featured several speakers who opposed SB774, but no one signed up to speak for it, according to a copy of the committee's sign-in sheet.

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The only Democrat on the committee, Sen. Will Bond, D-Little Rock, questioned the need to study the legislation after its time in the spotlight.

"Everybody knows about this bill," Bond said. "What are we going to accomplish by studying it?"

Collins-Smith responded that opponents from schools and churches had been unable to make it to the meeting during the session to speak against the bill.

In addition to Democrats, Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson expressed a desire before the start of the session to avoid debating a bathroom bill.

The governor pointed to North Carolina, where similar legislation prompted protests and boycotts from sporting and musical events, before the law was partially rescinded this year.

Collins-Smith added that as the proprietor of a hotel, she would rebut the argument that a bathroom bill would hurt the state's tourism industry.

The bathroom bill Collins-Smith proposed during the session never made it out of the eight-member Senate Judiciary Committee, where it needed five votes to go to the Senate floor.

On Wednesday, her proposal for an interim study also fell short of five votes, with several members not in attendance. The committee chairman, Sen. Jeremy Hutchinson, R-Little Rock, ruled that it got the majority of a voice vote anyway, and no one presented a challenge. Sen. Hutchinson is the nephew of the governor.

The committee backed other interim study proposals on voice votes.

The one that elicited the most debate was a proposal by Sen. Hutchinson to "study post-conviction relief on the grounds of evidence only available through new scientific methods, forensics, or technology."

The study proposal was supported by representatives from the Innocence Project, who said 135 convicted Arkansans have appealed to the group to take a look at their cases.

Collins-Smith questioned the "intentions" of the Innocence Project speakers, noting the group's support for some of the state's death-row inmates during a series of executions in April.

Sen. Trent Garner, R-El Dorado, also expressed reservations, saying he would take a "very critical" approach to the group's proposals.

Both lawmakers ended up supporting the study in a unanimous voice vote.

Metro on 06/22/2017

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