Legal / Legislative Updates

MARYLAND

Session’s Good, Bad, and Ugly Bills all Die

The Maryland legislature adjourned April 7, 2008, doing neither harm nor good to homeschoolers.

A bill that would have given homeschoolers access to federally funded special education services (Senate Bill 50) passed the Senate overwhelmingly, but did not obtain approval at the House committee level. The parallel House legislation (House Bill 121) never left committee either. This bill likewise made excellent progress last year before running out of time at the end. There appeared to be no significant opposition to this commendable bill, but other priorities were pushed ahead of it, and time ran out. Home School Legal Defense Association Of-Counsel Scott Somerville gave powerful testimony this year and last in support of the bill.

A bill that would have given high school-level, low-income homeschoolers access to the same subsidized college courses as others (H.B. 1077) did not receive committee approval before the session ended. H.B. 1249, which would have opened the door for public schools to offer classes to homeschoolers, suffered a similar fate. H.B. 1249 originally contained a problematic definition of homeschool. However, the sponsor subsequently worked with HSLDA to substitute a legally sound definition.

Several bad bills also died. S.B. 436, raising the compulsory attendance age to 18, had strong support from members of the legislature as well as the governor. The fight over this bill started in December 2007 with a televised debate between the sponsor, Senator Catherine Pugh, and HSLDA Staff Attorney Scott Woodruff. At that point, the bill had not actually been drafted, and Woodruff asked Pugh to give him a copy of the bill as soon as it was drafted to check it for technical problems. She never took him up on this offer, and as a result, the bill as drafted contained several technical problems that could have been avoided. It tried to provide an exemption for high school graduates, but the exemption was so narrow it would have excluded all private school and homeschooled students. The bill also tried to move the location of the statutory homeschool provisions, but in the process added an entirely unnecessary reference to the homeschool regulations, with unpredictable and possibly harmful consequences.

Senator Pugh publicly stated that S.B. 436 exempted homeschoolers, but if that was her intention, the bill was certainly not drafted in a way to achieve this end.

When some of these problems were aired in Senate committee, Woodruff, while testifying against the bill, offered to work with Senator Pugh to fix them. She declined the offer. However, when the bill was in House committee, Gary Cox of Family Heritage Matters was successful in getting most of the problems fixed by amendment. Senator Pugh was also compelled to accept an amendment lowering the top compulsory attendance age from 18 to 17. Even so, the bill carried a $45 million annual price tag. With Maryland finances in shambles, the House Ways and Means Committee decided there were more important ways to spend tax dollars, and the bill did not emerge from the committee.

H.B. 1040, a bill that would have raised the compulsory attendance age in Prince George’s County only, failed to achieve the approval of the House committee to which it was assigned.

There were numerous attacks on marriage in the 2008 legislature. S.B. 689 would have replaced the word marriage with domestic partnerships, but the bill never made it out of committee. H.B. 631 would have replaced marriage with civil marriage. We could never determine exactly what the sponsor intended by this. The sponsor never returned our phone calls and did not explain the bill’s purpose during its hearing. This bill was either pointless or harmful, but it entered the crowded dustbin of legislative history as the legislature adjourned.

The ugliest bill by far was H.B. 351, which sought to repeal Maryland’s definition of marriage. Maryland law currently recognizes marriage as only between “a man and a woman.” H.B. 351, however, would have changed this. It would have allowed any two people to marry, regardless of gender, forbidding only close family intermarriage. This bill had 40 cosponsors. By the grace of God, however, this bill perished in committee, leaving the freedoms based on marriage safe until next year.

— by Scott A. Woodruff