Sen. Leising continues to push to make cursive a mandatory part of the school curriculum with SB 113. Paige Clark, writing for the IBJ, reports that the bill has passed out of committee.

Sen. Leising has been tilting at this particular windmill for years since the State Board of Education made cursive discretionary for schools to teach. Advocates of cursive come up with post hoc rationalizations for why they care so much. It’s for the children, of course. But the justifications are specious:

“They need to be able to sign their name.”
Fine, spend a few hours one day teaching them to sign their name.

“It affects brain development.”
You get the same development from printing.

“They need to be able to read the original Declaration of Independence.”
When they get to this point, proponents of mandatory cursive are grasping at straws.

The fact is that cursive is the slide rule of writing. Nostalgia is the motivation for hanging on to it. The world is changing, and that’s upsetting. The offered rationales are pretexts to justify the underlying nostalgia. If we just discovered cursive today, we would be in no rush to force it on our kids.

If teachers and schools decide to spend limited class time on this mode of manufacturing letters, it’s not the end of the world, but making it mandatory is not a useful or necessary use of the General Assembly’s power.

The Indiana Law Blog has been a fantastic resource for longer than I have been blogging. It most generally provides solid information while avoiding opinion. So, when it does take a position, it’s worth taking notice. Today the ILB has an entry entitled “Indiana Law – Some thoughts on HJR 3: The time to speak out is now“.

I was a law student during the civil rights movement, a young attorney during the women’s rights movement, and now in my 70s feel privileged to be witnessing a revolution of gender equality.

But while barriers to same sex marriage are coming down across the nation, some of us in Indiana are determined to put in place new fortifications, ones that could take years to remove (except through the federal courts), and ones that may assure years of legal battles at the state level.

I think this General Assembly should stop HJR 3 now, before needlessly damaging our State’s reputation as a welcoming, 21st century place to live and work. The optimal time to stop HJR 3 would be to never vote it out of first house committee.

I agree. And, as I’ve mentioned before, the “let the people vote” rationale for sending it out of committee is disingenuous. It’s disingenuous because there is no “legalize gay marriage” option on the ballot. There is no “a legal status substantially similar to that of marriage for unmarried individuals shall be valid” option. For same sex couples, the vote is a “heads you win, tails I lose” vote. The General Assembly should strangle this constitutional amendment in its cradle.

I will tread lightly on this one because: a) I do not have a great familiarity with the subject matter; and b) it’s in my back yard, and that increases the danger of me stepping into something I don’t want to step into. That said, Rep. Truitt has introduced HB 1216 which addresses the modification of zoning commitments after annexation. Under IC 36-7-4-1015, a decision to rezone or approve a subdivision plat or a special exception or the like can be made contingent on the property owner committing to use or develop the land in a certain way. Generally, modification or termination of the commitment can be made only with the agreement of the plan commission or board of zoning appeals to whom the commitment was made. HB 1216 would shift that authority to the legislative body that annexes the property if the commitment is made after the effective date of the bill (July 1, 2014) and annexation is made after the commitment.

I don’t know of anything specific, but because this is a bill introduced by Rep. Truitt and because West Lafayette is in the process of a fairly significant annexation process, my guess is that this bill is targeted at the area due to be annexed by West Lafayette.

SB 191 introduced by Sen. Yoder provides that a records request to a city agency by a city legislative body or an individual member of that body isn’t treated the same as other public records request. In particular, the records cannot be redacted, the recipient is limited in further disclosing the record, and there are protections for the city agency that discloses a record that would otherwise be nondisclosable.

A good number of the mandatory exceptions to the Access to Public Records Act would also be nondisclosable under this statute. With respect to records that can be withheld at the discretion of the agencies, agencies would still have the discretion to withhold investigatory records, attorney work product, and records that would expose a vulnerability to terrorist attack.

I’m not sure that amending the public records law is the way to go here. First, this seems to be an internal municipal government issue. So, the answer would seem to be that you want to define the city legislative body’s authority in such a way that they have discretion to access the city agency records. However, that probably ties in to my second critique which is to question whether the authority should be vested in the hands of individual members of the city legislative body. The will of the individual isn’t the will of the body. The individual acting independently of the legislative body is a member of the public – no more, no less. He or she should not have special rights. Finally, it seems peculiar to confine this legislation to cities. Why not other political subdivisions? If it’s sound governing policy for one kind of unit, why not others?

Sen. Kruse has introduced SB 195 concerning student immunization. Because it’s Senator Kruse and because the HPV virus has been something of a flashpoint among social conservatives, that was the provision that most caught my eye. Currently, IC 20-34-4-3(b) provides:

A school that enrolls grade 6 female students shall provide each parent of a female student who is entering grade 6 with information prescribed by the state department of health under subsection (c) concerning the link between cervical cancer and the human papillomavirus (HPV) infection and that an immunization against the human papillomavirus (HPV) infection is available.

Advance Indiana had a good blog post about the debate in 2007 when that provision was being debated. One of the accusations being thrown around at the time was that advocacy for HPV immunization was all about enriching pharmaceutical companies. The fact is that some parents and students might want a relatively low risk, low cost way of reducing the risk of cervical cancer. On the other hand, various social conservatives have tried to make the case that HPV immunization will encourage promiscuity. (HPV being a sexually transmitted infection.) The logic would seem to be that cancer is an appropriate penalty for sinful behavior.

This new bill, SB 195 would eliminate the requirement that a school provide the female students with that information.

Additionally, the bill would generally disassociate schools from the enforcement of immunization requirements and has the immunization provider reporting to a state registry.

SB 408 introduced by Senators Becker and Miller addresses “neonatal abstinence syndrome” which is defined as “the various adverse effects that occur in a newborn infant who was exposed to addictive illegal or prescription drugs while in the mother’s womb. It would require the issuance of rules imposing various reporting requirements for hospitals to report neonatal abstinence syndrome data to the Department of Health. The rules would eventually include an appropriate definition of a neonatal abstinence syndrome diagnosis, methodology for testing newborn infants, and practices for detecting drug abuse by pregnant women.

The legislation would prohibit disclosure of data gathered under this law to law enforcement agencies for criminal prosecution and disclosure to the department of child services for purposes of terminating parental rights or declaring the infant a child in need of services.

This legislation flirts with the fine line of attempting to promote infant health on the one side and, on the other, viewing women as untrustworthy but necessary vessels for carrying infants. Maybe what bothers me most is the narrow focus on addictive drugs. I suppose I would have a better feel for this legislation if there was a broader approach of figuring out how to improve the health of pregnant women (e.g. the best sorts of prenatal care to subsidize).

Rep. Lehe’s HB 1200 looks like a whole lot of nothing. Or, at least I can’t tell what it is supposed to accomplish. First it makes a big declaration that the General Assembly wants to conserve, protect, and encourage agriculture and that the Indiaa Code should be construed to protect the rights of farmers, including their right to to choose among agricultural and livestock practices “including the use of continuously changing technology.”

Then it declares that nothing in Title 15-17 concerning animals and animal health or animal products should be construed to prohibit or impair traditional or modern farming and livestock production practices.

My guess is that this bill generally stands for the proposition that other concerns addressed by the Indiana Code and, in particular, addressed by Title 15 should not get in the way of confined feeding operations. And, further, that the authors recognize that if they advance this proposition in any but the most general terms, support for the measure will be much more difficult. It’s one thing to make sweeping generalizations. It’s quite another to offer detailed legislation that specifies who gets to do what to whom and under what circumstances. That’s when the trade-offs of a policy come into sharp focus.

Niki Kelly, writing for the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, reports that, after taking testimony, the House Judiciary Committee postponed a vote on HJR 3 (formerly known as HJR 6) as well as its “companion” bill HB 1153. (See my prior “Nix Six” post for details.) The speculation is that this means there is at least uncertainty about whether they have the votes for passage. The members of the committee are, Republican Reps. Steuerwald, Washburne, Cox, Koch, Leonard, Mayfield, McMillin, McNamara, and Torr and Democratic Reps. Bauer, Delaney, Dvorak, and Smith.

Ms. Kelly reports that all four Democrats will vote against the proposal (although, I know that at least Rep. Bauer voted in favor of it last time through). That means if there are three Republicans who also oppose the measure, the proposal will not pass. While the proponents of HJR 3 are primarily Republicans, there are a growing number of Republican opponents as well. Even, I suspect, on the House Judiciary committee. Just how many opponents remain to be seen.

Senators Wyss and Arnold have introduced SB 134 which, I believe, is attempting to address the problem of “paper terrorism.” (Not their term) This is where people will file liens and whatnot just to mess with you. The paperwork is relatively easy to file and occasionally causes headaches, particularly where a lender or other third party would simply rather not bother dealing with you because of the frivolous paperwork. Such paper terrorism is a tactic among anti-government groups such as “sovereign citizens.” (Also, related, see my old post “Redemption Song” and this one about HB 1054 from 2013).

SB 134 would allow the victim of a frivolous lien to file a motion with the court to review the lien or encumbrance and, if the court determines the filing is fraudulent, award costs and attorney’s fees, determine that the filing is void, and instruct the office where the matter is filed to purge the record.

The bill would also make false filing a felony.

The main problem with the bill is that many times, parties have a legitimate difference of opinion about a debt or obligation that involves a security interest. With this legislation in place, I would expect a lot of litigation over these honest differences of opinion to turn into a sideshow about whether the lien was filed fraudulently.

Rep Ober has introduced HB 1126 concerning claims for unpaid wages, in particular the penalties available to employees making those claims. The procedures can get a little technical, but as a general proposition, if an employer hasn’t paid all of the wages to which an employee is due, the employee can sue the employer for the unpaid wages, plus a 200% penalty, plus attorney’s fees. If it’s a former employee, the Department of Labor is supposed to screen the claim before it can move forward. (A safeguard intended to counteract the baser impulses of a disgruntled employee who might be inclined to make stuff up.) In my experience, in recent years, the Department of Labor has been less than diligent in that screening function.

In any case, Rep. Ober’s bill would restrict those penalties. Rather than being more or less automatic, the 200% penalty and attorney’s fees would be discretionary with a judge and would be contingent on the employer having failed to make the payment in bad faith. The total penalty plus the attorney’s fee awarded could not exceed 200% of the unpaid wages.

This is maybe more restrictive than need be. But, I do think in these wage claim and wage payment cases the attorney fee tail is all too often wagging the dog of unpaid wages. You’ll see case reports that make it appear that a plaintiff’s attorney was pushing his client into pursuing a very marginal wage claim in hopes of getting lucky and getting a jackpot attorney’s fee award.

There is also language in this bill that would expand the permissible items eligible for wage withholding with the agreement of the employee, including equipment reimbursement, education reimbursement, and advance payroll or vacation pay.