A Citizen's Guide to Indiana

Masson's Blog

SB 12: Jailing School Librarians for “Material Harmful to a Minor”

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Sen. Tomes has introduced SB 12 which is a resurrection of a provision that took a lot of heat during last year’s General Assembly concerning schools and “material harmful to minors.” The rhetoric opposing that provision — and the title to this post — was probably overblown compared to the actual text of the legislation. However, the motive for introducing this legislation also appears to be an unjustified moral panic over materials available to kids at school libraries. In the war of public opinion, it’s probably too optimistic to expect a nuanced discussion over the text of legislation and the real world need for that legislation.

The way I described the similar SB 17 from last session was as follows:

SB 17 removes protections for school librarians that currently exist with respect to material alleged to be “harmful to minors.” The public commentary on this has been a little overwrought since “material harmful to minors” is defined by IC 35-49-2-2 and basically tracks the definition of obscenity: appeals to prurient interest, patently offensive to prurient interests, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value. So, the likelihood of schools having much in the way of qualifying material seems pretty small. But, by the same token, the utility of removing bars to prosecution of school librarians is nil. It’s a political move to exploit a panic among parents that naughty stuff might be in the school libraries. Probably comes from the same folks who were certain that there was Satanic ritual abuse of children in the Comet Ping Pong basement. And, now that I type it, I suppose there’s a group of people who similarly imagine that our public schools are immoral corrupters of children.

 

SJR 9: Right to Bail

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Senator Young has introduced Senate Joint Resolution 9 which would amend the Indiana Constitution concerning the right to bail. Currently Article 1, Section 17, says that “with sufficient sureties,” a person accused of crimes other than murder or treason is entitled to bail. (Which is to say, entitled to be released from jail pending trial or conviction.) This amendment would add a list of offenses for which bail is not required (although the court may, at its discretion, grant bail for these offenses):

  • A person charged with a serious crime (defined as a crime for which the punishment can be a term of imprisonment of at least three years) if the person was awaiting trial on another crime.
  • A person charged with a new felony if the person allegedly committed the new felony while awaiting trial on a serious crime.
  • A person charged with a serious crime if no conditions of bail are sufficient to protect the public from harm; protect any person from harm; ensure the appearance in court of a person charged  with a crime; or ensure that a person charged with a crime does not 32 commit another crime.

The amendment would also place into the Indiana Constitution the following purposes for bail:

  • Protect the public from harm;
  • Protect any person from harm, including a person charged with a crime;
  • Reasonably ensure the appearance in court of a person 6 charged with a crime; and
  • Reasonably ensure that a person charged with a crime does not commit another crime.

The discussions I’ve been seeing lately mainly seem to favor a more permissive approach to bail, primarily based on the recognition that a person who has only been accused of a crime shouldn’t be prematurely punished for that crime; and that bail necessarily falls hardest on poor people. (As the man said, “the law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal loaves of bread.” The man, in that case, being Anatole France.) On its face, this amendment seems to be more restrictive of bail. And maybe that’s a reaction to the move toward greater permissiveness. But I’ll confess that my practice is civil rather than criminal, so there could be nuance of which I’m unaware.

Books of 2022

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Once again, I kept a list of the books I read this past year. I don’t have a particular reason to think this is of general interests, but for my own amusement, here they are:

  • Batavia’s Graveyard by Mike Dash. Really like this one. A Dutch East India ship wrecked on its way to the East Indies in, if memory serves, the sixteenth century. Survivors wind up on a spit of land and some bad dudes take over.
  • The Outlaw Ocean by Ian Urbina. A series of articles about various things going on in lawless or underpoliced parts of the ocean. Slavery. Whale hunting. Hunting the whale hunters and poachers. Abortions at sea just beyond the jurisdiction of anti-abortion countries.
  • Happiness of Pursuit by Chris Guillebeau. This one didn’t really land for me. From a Googled book review, “case studies of regular people in search of long-term happiness. Whether they’ve walked across continents, founded nationwide charities or – like the author – visited every country in the world by the time they’re thirty-five.”
  • Northland by Porter Fox. The guy travels the northern border of the United States and tells about his experience as well as some of the history in those areas. Reminded me a bit of the style of Tony Horwitz’s books. This was a good one.
  • Later by Stephen King. Enjoyable fiction of the sort that King produces so reliably. The protagonist is a kid who has the ability to see the ghosts of dead people.
  • Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card. This was a re-read. Ender Wiggin is a little boy who is smarter than everyone, goes to space Battle School, and unwittingly commits a genocide against the alien Bugger race.
  • A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth by Henry Gee. This goes through the ups and downs of living organisms on our planet. The sheer scale of time is mind-bending. And the several episodes of extinction events are humbling. As individuals and, even as a species, we are fairly incidental and inconsequential in the scheme of things.
  • Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card. This is a sequel to Ender’s game. Ender is dealing with the aftermath of being the Xenocide and ends up on a planet inhabited by the second alien race encountered by humans.
  • Drunk: How We Slipped, Stumbled, and Danced Our Way to Civilization by Edward Slingerland. Alcohol has some very obvious negative effects which would seem to impose some competitive disadvantages when it comes to evolution and to competing cultures and civilizations. And, yet, use of alcohol and drunkenness is almost ubiquitous across history and civilizations. What advantages explain its staying power? He offers several explanations. Among them that alcohol facilitates certain kinds of lateral thinking that helps with problem solving at times, it facilitates social cohesion in certain ways, and it makes living in the relatively cramped, oppressive conditions of an agricultural civilization more tolerable.
  • Xenocide by Orson Scott Card. The third book in the original Ender trilogy. The writing was worse than I remembered. But the plot was fairly interesting, having to do with a smart virus that has made itself essential to aliens on a particular planet and might contrive to take over human biology as well; with a focus on the ethical concerns this sort of thing raises.
  • Billy Summers by Stephen King. Another solid piece of King fiction. Summers is a hit man who is pretty smart but plays dumb. He’s being set up.
  • The Greatest Beer Run Ever by Chick Donahue. Based on a true story wherein Chickie undertakes to deliver beers from home to the guys from his neighborhood who are serving in Vietnam.
  • The Quiet American by Graham Greene. A 1956 book having to do with the end of the French colonial period in Vietnam, the beginning of American involvement, and a love triangle.
  • Seven Games: A Human History by Oliver Roeder. The author takes a look at the history and game play of checkers, backgammon, chess, Go, poker, Scrabble, and bridge along with efforts to “solve” those games with computers.
  • Powers and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages by Dan Jones. Very readable. A good survey of the middle ages in Western Europe. It starts with environmental catastrophe in Central Asia which displaced people who displaced the Huns who helped bring about the fall of Rome. I think we go from there to somewhere in the 15th or 16th century.
  • Men Who Hate Women by Laura Bates. A look at online incel culture, how those attitudes infect the broader culture, and how those things relate to a lot of the social dysfunction we see today.
  • A Beautifully Foolish Endeavour by Hank Green. A sequel to “An Absolutely Remarkable Thing,” the two of which comprise “the Carl Saga.” It’s a science fiction novel having to do with, among other things, addictive social media controlled by a malignant narcissist from the earlier novel.
  • A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles. I really liked this one. In lieu of having him killed, the communists have a Russian nobleman confined to an upscale hotel rather than just killing him. It follows him and the hotel over the course of many years.
  • Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War by Tony Horwitz. Written in the late 90s, Horwitz travels around the south and looks at the influence the Civil War stil has on the area as well as giving you some history lessons about the Civil War itself. Some of the issues he identifies in the late 90s as being related to the Civil War are even more pronounced in the present day.
  • Holy War: How Vasco da Gama’s Epic Voyages Turned the Tide in a Centuries Old Clash of Civilization. This book provides some background about Islam’s founding and rapid expansion and the subsequent Reconquista in the Iberian peninsula. Then it provides an in depth history of Prince Henry the Navigator’s efforts with respect to Portuguese navigation culminating in da Gama’s voyage around the Cape of Good Hope and his encounters in India. We learned a lot about Columbus growing up. Da Gama’s voyage was a lot longer and more difficult and arguably more consequential. But we only learned about him in passing. It was good to read this not long after that history of the middle ages because there was a fair amount of overlap but from somewhat different perspectives.
  • The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson. Book One of the Starlight Archives. Big, sprawling epic fantasy.
  • The Year 1000: When Explorers Connected the World and Globalization Began by Valerie Hansen. She takes you around the world, discusses the societies in those places and times, and talks about explorations happening around that time that linked one culture to another (albeit very tenuously in some cases).
  • The Midwestern Survival Guide by Charlie Berens. A cute, tongue-in-cheek book about Midwestern culture.
  • Die Trying by Lee Child. A Jack Reacher book. Reacher is smarter and tougher than everyone and will always defeat the bad guy and get the girl. That happens in this installment too. It’s a fun read.
  • Voyagers by Nicolas Thomas. A history of the seaborne migrations that settled the islands of the Pacific.
  • A Psalm for the Wild Built by Becky Chambers. A novella where a tea-monk who travels from town to town making tea for people who make it goes into the wilderness and encounters a wild-built robot seeking to make contact with humans.
  • Chrysalis by Lincoln Child. A tech thriller/mystery.
  • Retail Gangster by Gary Weiss. An account of the rise and fall of Crazy Eddie’s electronics stores in the 70s and 80s in the New York City area.
  • Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson. No description needed.
  • Words of Radiance by Brandon Sanderson. Book Two of the Starlight Archives.

All in all, a pretty good set of books, I’d say!

 

State Affairs Indiana on Indiana’s Public Health Care Funding

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Needle

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Kaitlin Lange, writing for State Affairs Indiana, has part one of a series on health care in Indiana. This part focuses particularly on Indiana’s public health funding. Like much of the rest of its public infrastructure, Indiana spends comparatively little on public health. County health departments rely heavily on local funding which varies wildly from county to county. This comes down to priorities and available resources.

You saw some of the most dramatic consequences of this in Scott County several years back. The county’s health department couldn’t offer HIV testing. For several years prior to an HIV epidemic, a Planned Parenthood provided that service. But when the Planned Parenthood shut down, there was no testing, and when the epidemic took hold, it was well underway before the County could react. They were eventually able to stem the tide, in part, with a syringe exchange program. (Subsequent study suggests that, had testing been available, the County probably could have reduced the number of infections from 215 to 10 or fewer.)
Treating 200 HIV patients is a lot more expensive than spending the money necessary to make early testing available. But that’s like so much of what good government does: spending money in ways that prevent problems, making the benefits of that spending largely invisible to the citizens. Citizens see the taxes but don’t see the HIV cases that don’t materialize. Or, my go-to is drainage. Spend a bunch of tax dollars on drainage tile and storm sewers; nobody realizes how much they benefit from the floods that don’t happen.
In any case, the Lange article is fairly long and covers a lot more ground than I’ve described. Definitely worth a read.

“There is but one way to secure good schools”

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I’ve posted part of this quote many times, but just came across Caleb Mills’ second “One of the People” addresses from 1848, and it bears quoting at length. It remains relevant:

STATE TAX TO SUPPORT SCHOOLS.

Liberty

Awaken the public mind, and concentrate it on the question, Am I not interested in the proper education of all that are socially and politically connected with me?

There is but one way to secure good schools, and that is to pay for them. There is but one method to induce the youth to frequent them and that is to make them what they ought to be, by such applicances of funds, as will awaken an universal interest in them. Experience has shown that this can be effectually done only by drawing a large share of the funds for their support, directly from the pockets of the people, upon the ad valorem principle of taxation. When we are required to pay a tax for the support of schools, irrespective of the question whether we have children to educate or not, then we shall attend the school meetings, take an interest in having a good school in our several districts by employing competent teachers, furnishing the children with suitable school books, comfortable and convenient school rooms, and visiting them from time to time to ascertain whether teachers and taught are doing their duty. It is vain and idle to suppose they will flourish without the appliance of that motive power of universal action, interest. In no department of human enterprise has this truth been more fully demonstrated than in Education. The best schools, both in this country and Europe, are to be found only in connection with funds raised on the principle above mentioned. Public funds are desirable only to encourage effort, not to supersede the necessity of exertion. This is evident from the character of schools in States where they are sustained almost wholly by public funds, compared with schools sustained by taxes.

Let us shut our eyes no longer to the teachings of experience. Let us have a system based on the broad and republican principle, that it is the duty of the state to furnish the means of primary education to the entire youth within her bounds. Impressed with a just appreciation of the magnitude of the enterprise, the value of the interests at stake, and the obstacles to be overcome, let us not despair of success, assured that intelligent efforts, directed by kindness and perseverance can not fail of ultimate triumph. We must not be discouraged by ignorance and prejudice. To remove the one and correct the other, we need nothing but the combined influence of light and love. All, to a greater or less extent, are aiming at the same object, and they differ only as to the means. Convince the ignorant man that knowledge would increase his happiness, and give him power for good, and you make him a staunch friend of learning. Satisfy the prejudiced man, that he has only misapprehended the best means of securing his own welfare, and the happiness of his children, and you convert him into an unflinching and zealous advocate of common schools. Let us gather up the experience of the past, and bring it to bear upon the subject of popular education, and we shall find in Indiana as cordial friends to the intellectual and moral culture of the rising generation, as in any other State in the Union. Awaken the public mind, and concentrate it on the question, Am I not interested in the proper education of all that are socially and politically connected with me? The bearings of such a question have not been duly considered. It needs to be discussed and examined. We are a shrewd people where dollars and cents are concerned. Many have never taken that view of their duty, and when it has been presented to them have frankly acknowledged that they have never thought of it in that light. Does not the Farmer derive as large a percent upon what he expends in the education of his children, as from any investment he can make of his funds? Does the amount which he pays to sustain a good school for the instruction of all the children in the district or township in which he lives, never find its way back again to him in the improved character of the community for intelligence, enterprise, and morals? Is not real estate in such a community more valuable, capital more productive, and enterprise more intelligent and successful? Would not the general thrift and prosperity caused by this intellectual and moral elevation, lighten public burdens, increase social enjoyments, enhance the value of property, multiply the facilities for its acquisition, and increase the security of its possession? Such cultivation could not fail to diminish pauperism and crime, lessen poverty and suffering, throw around the gardens, orchards, and the products of the field, an inclosure that would never be passed, improve the highways, and materially increase the substantial comforts and conveniences of the house, the farm, and the implements of husbandry.

…

[Following a discussion of the principal of ad valorem taxes]

Such a plan would distribute the burdens equitably on all according to their ability to bear them, and according to the pecuniary interests affected by the intellectual and moral elevation of the great mass of the people. Is not the rich land holder interested to the full amount of his property in the moral and intellectual culture of the community in which it is located? Is not its value enhanced by the intelligence and virtue, and lessened by the ignorance and vice of the surrounding neighborhood? Is not the merchant also interested to the full amount of his stock in trade, in the enterprise, intelligence and integrity of the community in which he does business? Would he find so large a share of his profits engulfed in the whirlpool of bad debts, if the people were honest and industrious? Can the manufacturer invest his capital with equal security and hope of success among an ignorant and vicious people that he could in an intelligent and virtuous community? Would a railroad or a telegraph running through a region, whose inhabitants, induced by designing men to believe that such monopolies were hostile to their interests, should obstruct the cars, remove the rails, or cut the wires, be as productive, or the market value of its stock be as high, as it would be, if such an improvement was situated in a section of the country distinguished for its provision for the education of the whole rising generation without distinction?

Then the rich will have no occasion to complain of the burden of a two mill tax, when they consider that their property is not only affected in its value by the character of the immediate community in which it is located, but also by the legislation of the State, where it is vested. It is evident that the vote of a wise man and a sound statesman, will count no more than that given by an ignorant, selfish demagogue. Can it be reasonably expected that the representatives of an ignorant county will be as intelligent and competent to enact wise and judicious laws, or take as enlarged and liberal views of the real interests of the commonwealth, as those chosen by a more intelligent constituency? Their honesty and patriotism may be equal, but their legislative competency may justly be questioned. If this be a sound and correct conclusion, then the man of wealth will find no better investment for the small portion of his funds, which such a law would require, than the object contemplated by the passage of such a bill. His property, as far as affected by legislation, is just as much in the power of the representative of a constituency, one third of whom can neither read nor write, as it is in that of the man who has the honor to represent “Old Wayne,” and who may well be proud of the fact that of his 9349 adult constituency in 1840, only forty-four were unable to read.

Pass such a law, and it would immediately remove two of the most formidable obstacles to the prosperity of our schools—the want of adequate funds, and a proper degree of interest in the school by the great mass of the people.”

All six of Mills’ “One of the People” messages are available here.

Charter Schools Want to Confiscate Indianapolis School Buildings Under State $1 Law

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Nice building you’ve got there. The State of Indiana says its mine now.

Per reporting by Amelia Pak-Harvey for Chalkbeat Indiana: Following a decision by Indianapolis Public Schools to reorganize its schools, a plan which calls for closing six schools, there are three charter schools who expressed an intent to take IPS buildings away from the school district “through any viable means.” One of those viable means is by payment of a dollar under a state law applicable to school systems that are not currently using buildings, usually paid for with local tax dollars, requiring those schools to give away their buildings to outside charter school vendors for the nominal sum of a dollar. This is the price regardless of the market value of the buildings.

The Indiana Court of Appeals recently said that the law doesn’t constitute a “taking” of local property by the State because the takings clause does not apply to confiscation of local government property by the State of Indiana. According to the decision, the State can take any local government property it wants, regardless of how it was acquired or who paid for it originally, without paying for it. The specific question before the Court of Appeals was whether the mandatory $1 sale from school corporations to charter operators was a taking without just compensation. But the logic of the Court’s holding was not confined to the issue of schools and charters. Says the Indiana court of appeals, “[t]he takings clause does not apply against the state in favor of its own municipalities because a municipality is merely a department of the state, and the state may withhold, grant or withdraw powers and privileges as it sees fit.”

I’ve received some push back on this argument, and it’s not a slam dunk, but I continue to think that this taking of property paid for by local tax dollars in the service of the state generally violates Art. 10, §1 of the Indiana Constitution which requires the General Assembly to provide a “uniform and equal rate of property assessment and taxation.” (You can charge locals a higher local tax rate for goods and services that stay local, but you can’t balance the State’s budget on the backs of the taxpayers of, say, Benton County.) Be that as it may, I think the better course of action is for the General Assembly to back away from this indirect, uneven, and unpredictable subsidy of charter schools. It creates a disincentive for regular schools to stop operations at a building even where doing so would be rational. If the General Assembly wants to subsidize charter buildings, it should create a State funded subsidy program.

Sen. Young votes against filibuster of same sex and interracial marriage protection legislation (Braun votes to filibuster).

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Todd Young joined eleven other Republicans and all of the Democrats to end a filibuster of legislation to protect same-sex marriage. Sen. Braun (who will soon be running to be Indiana’s governor) voted with 36 other Republicans to filibuster the proposal and prevent it coming to the floor for an up or down vote.

The “Respect for Marriage Act” repeals 28 USC 1738C which does not require states to give full faith and credit to same-sex and interracial marriages from other states. It replaces that with a provision that requires full faith and credit. And it recognizes same-sex and interracial marriages as valid for purposes of federal law.

The Republican Senators who ultimately voted for the measure were: Roy Blunt of Missouri, Richard Burr of North Carolina, Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, Susan Collins of Maine, Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, Rob Portman of Ohio, Dan Sullivan of Alaska, Mitt Romney of Utah, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Joni Ernst of Iowa and Todd Young of Indiana.

Filed Under: Law

My thoughts on transgender athletes and school teams

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Idea: I have opinions and the Internet needs to know about them.

So, yesterday, I had a post talking about the Indiana General Assembly’s requirement that schools expressly designate their teams as male, female, or co-ed; prohibiting people born biologically male from participating on teams designated as female regardless of that person’s gender; and requiring a grievance procedure. I later updated the post to reflect that IPS is under an injunction preventing it from complying with the statutory requirement because the Southern District of Indiana has ruled that doing so would likely violate a student’s Title IX rights. (My present — not thoroughly researched — view is that, until the Seventh Circuit finishes its review of the District Court opinion, schools are in a bit of a pick-your-poison situation.)

Not that anyone asked, but what’s my personal view on transgender athlete participation in sports consistent with the athlete’s gender? Don’t the physical effects of testosterone give an advantage to a person born biologically male who is gendered female? (And, my apologies if I’m getting the language wrong here. The discussions around this subject have been fluid, and I’m sure I haven’t kept up.) Isn’t that unfair to the girls born biologically female who didn’t have as much testosterone dumping into their body?

Maybe.

But: a) I think the concern is more theoretical than real; b) In this context, I care a lot more about the rank and file athletes than the tippy-top elite athletes; and c) This would be just one more accident of birth that contributes to athletic ability. Ultimately, I think the costs of excluding transgender athletes outweigh the benefits.

My perspective is that of an average athlete with step-brothers and, for that matter, a step-family who are insanely good athletes. Growing up, I wasn’t exactly bad at sports. I was too skinny, but I had good reflexes and, as I got older, decent coordination. However, my step-dad and his sons were really, really good at sports. I also went to a big high school where only the really good athletes made varsity. So, by comparison, I thought I wasn’t very good. But I liked playing. I still remember first grade, Charles Elementary School, always last picked at kickball. Then one day I caught a kicked ball and got the player out. Brant, one of the very athletic kids, gave me a high five, and I don’t recall being picked last after that. It was glorious. Also, being skinny and having good reflexes made me a pretty fair dodge ball player. I still remember a pretty inspired set of dodges during gym in Mrs. Busick’s fifth grade class … but I digress.

When I became a father, my kids were in a similar position athletically, and we played a lot of rec soccer over the years. We didn’t travel, and they didn’t play varsity. All of this is to say that, when I think sports, I’m thinking more of the mid-level athletes. The junior varsity. The support players. The teams who never win sectionals. The people who find value in sports even if they aren’t grand-champions of the world. Sports are about team, camaraderie, competition, working toward a goal, discipline, joyful movement, anticipation of an outcome, the thrill of success, coping with defeat, and a lot more.

So, in that context, how much good are we doing by excluding a person from competing with members of their own gender due an accident of them being born with a biology inconsistent with that gender? And I know this just sounds like so much mealy-mouthed bullshit to people who think that if you’re born with a penis you’re a male and if you’re born without one, you’re a female, and that’s that. I know because there was a time when I thought like that. Turns out life is more complicated.

I think we’re doing more harm than good. First of all, I think the number of people born biologically male and compete for championships in female sports is going to be a very, very small number. Certainly not a big enough number to justify the moral panic on the issue. The idea that cisgender boys are going to pretend to be girls in order to win championships in girls’ sports strikes me as far fetched. And if we’re not talking about championships; if we’re talking about routine day-to-day competition, I think any biological advantages from testosterone or whatnot is going to be just one of a lot of biological accidents that contribute to athletic success. Even among people born biologically female, there is going to be a difference in testosterone, height, speed, strength and so forth that aren’t governed by “merit” like hard work, training, and studying the sport. Short girls who want to play volleyball still have to deal with the fact that some girls have tall parents, become tall themselves, and end up with an athletic advantage.

My personal experience with transgender kids isn’t extensive or necessarily drawn from a representative sample, but — not to put too fine a point on it, most of the kids I know who fit in this category don’t strike me as gifted athletes.  They’re going to get waxed by most of the other kids who play against them regardless of gender. So, if they want to play sports, what are we gaining by excluding them from athletic teams consistent with their gender? Nothing. We’re doing very real harm. Maybe we’re doing it in service of excluding those transgender kids who are gifted athletes, but like I said, that’s going to be a small number (because overall, transgender or not, the number of gifted athletes is limited.) And I don’t know that, in most cases, the advantages conveyed by having more testosterone at birth are different in principle from other accidents of birth, not related to one’s sex, that contribute athletic advantages.

So, there you have my two cents.

 

 

Indiana General Assembly Requiring Schools to Adopt Anti-Trans Athletic Policies

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The General Assembly adopted HB 1041 which was vetoed by Governor Holcomb and then subsequently adopted over his veto. It enacted IC 20-33-13 which, among other things, requires schools to adopt anti-trans athletic policies. Specifically, the law requires schools to designate an athletic team as one of: boys, girls, or co-ed. It then prohibits a child who was born biologically male at birth from competing on a team designated as a girls’ team.

On top of dictating the legislature’s policy on school sports, it requires schools to establish a grievance procedure for a student or student’s parent if they want to complain about another student’s biology. Specifically, the legislation provides:

  Sec. 5. (a) A student or parent of a student may submit a grievance to a school corporation, public school, nonpublic school, or association for a violation of section 4 [the section forbidding children born biologically male from participating on a girls’ team] of this chapter.

(b) Each school corporation, public school, nonpublic school, and association described in section 4 of this chapter shall:

(1) establish and maintain a grievance procedure; or

(2) maintain a grievance or protest procedure that the school corporation, public school, nonpublic school, or association established before July 1, 2022;

for the resolution of a grievance submitted under this section.

(emphasis added). If a school violates the chapter — either permitting the child to participate on a forbidden team or failing to adopt a grievance procedure — the school is on the hook for attorneys fees, actual damages, and an extra $1,000 in liquidated damages. Honestly, the attorney’s fees are the big ticket item for something like this. These kind of fees really have a way of adding up quickly when someone other than a client is footing the bill.

The reason I was prompted to write this post is because the West Lafayette school board introduced a policy that would prohibit what the statute requires the school to prohibit and would implement the required grievance procedure. The Lafayette Journal and Courier ran a story that was pretty clear about the State mandating that the school do this. Nevertheless, the comment section (why do I go to the comment section?) reflected a sense by at least a couple of readers that the School was pursuing the policy on its own initiative. That’s simply not the case.

Edited to add: The Southern District of Indiana has issued an injunction at least to one particular case in Indianapolis. I guess I’m not entirely sure where that leaves schools on a statewide basis.

Eighteen Years

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Still pounding out pixels after all these years.

Masson’s Blog is old enough to vote. It’s tough to decide how much has changed since 2004 or remember exactly what that was. One cultural benchmark I like to use is the Dazed and Confused measurement. That movie was released in 1993 and depicted a day in 1976. The cultural shifts between 1976 and 1993 were enormous. It might be due to my age, but the differences between 2004 and 2022 don’t seem anywhere near as pronounced. 1976-1993 gets you from Gerald Ford to Bill Clinton. 2004 to 2022 gets you from George W. Bush to Joe Biden. 1976-1993 gets you from no computers basically anywhere to desktops in a lot of homes. 2004-2022 gets you from flip phones to smart phones. What do we have in the latter time period that even compares to Evel Knievel, Muhammad Ali, and KISS? Probably something, actually. Back in the late 70s, I was a little kid, finely attuned to all of the pop culture phenomena. Now I’m a middle aged dad, probably not far from AARP solicitations. I’m oblivious.

I started this blog in the last days of a Democratic governor. Joe Kernan had just lost an election to Mitch Daniels. There hasn’t been a Democratic governor in Indiana since. Now we’re so far gone from purple to red that Indiana was the only state to elect an election denier to Secretary of State. And not just by a little, resoundingly. They did so in spite of the candidate’s poor past job performance, questions about personal enrichment from campaign funds, questions about whether he complied with residency requirements in past races, and a very qualified Democratic candidate. Back then, Democrats and Republicans battled it out for control of the House of Representatives. That ended following the 2010 election where the Republicans enjoyed massive gains and then leveraged those gains through favorable electoral maps.

Republicans might not have needed those maps to maintain their majorities however. Another thing that changed has been the media landscape. Blogs were in their infancy and traditional media was still relatively strong. Over the years, blogs rose briefly and then fell as Facebook and Twitter became ascendant, algorithms directed attention, Google Reader was killed, and RSS feeds became unused relics. Meanwhile, traditional media was consolidated and hollowed out. More emphasis was placed on cheap wire feeds and opinion pieces rather than local reporting. Those feeds and opinions – along with the classified ads – were easily co-opted by non-local sources. People’s attention is fractured and, to the extent they get news, its usually national in scope and often biased toward the reader’s tribe. I don’t know if the average citizen ever had a lot of patience for detail and nuance, but if they did, they no longer do. Create, like or share a nostalgic meme complaining about kids these days and call it good.

I stopped posting as frequently over the years. I’m probably as guilty as anyone about jumping over to social media. A quick hit on Twitter or Facebook largely scratched whatever itch got me blogging. And those quick hits usually got a lot more attention than the detailed stuff I post here. Even here, I learned that a quick post about Daylight Saving Time got a lot more attention than some nuanced explanation of tax legislation or whatever. As people who have stuck with me this long know, my subject matter has become painfully focused on education issues generally and West Lafayette schools in particular. My kids are nearing the end of their days there, however, and I wouldn’t be surprised if my focus changes. I think schools are extremely important for communities, whether you happen to have kids in them or not, but I can’t imagine I will fee that as acutely when those public schools are no longer part of my family’s day-to-day life.

And I guess that brings up some more big changes. When I started this blog, I was in my early 30s. I had a very young family. I was only a few years removed from working with the Legislative Services Agency and a good deal of my day-job was tied up doing collections. Now, I am in my early 50s and am nearly an empty-nester. I have not done collections work for a decade, and my main focus is municipal law as county attorney for Tippecanoe County. When I started blogging, I was a relative newcomer to the area and, in fact, lived up in Monticello. Now, I’ve lived in West Lafayette for over a decade and feel deeply tied to the County and the city.

I guess I don’t have any big thoughts about What It All Means. The Internet is awash in hot takes, so I suppose it can do without one more for the moment. I’ll keep blogging when the mood strikes.