Section 2. Supporters rally against anti-trans youth legislation on the steps of the Texas Capitol
(Photo by Josh Shook)

Gonzalez leads legislative walkout; lawmakers practically ban abortion

The Texas Legislature’s 2021 sessions — one regular session and three special sessions — were filled with voter suppression bills, gerrymandering, abortion restriction legislation and more anti-LGBTQ proposals than have ever been submitted during one year in any legislature in any state.

Equality Texas CEO Ricardo Martinez called the sessions “brutal.”

After a regular session that got little accomplished, Democrats felt almost helpless at the beginning of the first special session, which was laser-focused on passing anti-transgender, anti-abortion and anti-voter rights bills.

So the Dems decided to walk out.

And the face of the walk out was Dallas Rep. Jessica Gonzalez, a founding member of the Texas LGBT Legislative Caucus, who explained to people across the state and on national newscasts why Texas Democrats had no other choice.

A walkout in Texas means more than just leaving the floor of the Texas House of Representatives. The governor has the power to have absent legislators arrested and held in custody on the House floor. So an effective walkout means leaving the state.

The last time Texas legislators left the state was in 2003, to protest then-Speaker Tom Delay’s gerrymandering plan. That time, Democrats found shelter just across the border in Oklahoma.

This time, though, Gonzalez and other Dems traveled to Washington, D.C., to lobby Congress to pass voter rights legislation that would supersede pending Texas legislation. They spent most of the summer in D.C., but by the third special session, Congress still hadn’t acted, and Texas legislators began returning home.

And during that third special session, plenty of bad legislation got through.

New boundaries were drawn for legislative and U.S. House seats. Although Texas gained two seats in the latest census count, the new boundaries take a seat away from the state’s growing Latinx community. Part of Oak Lawn was drawn into a Republican seat that stretches almost to Wichita Falls.

The Justice department is looking into how minority voting rights will be affected but no longer has the Voting Rights Act to back up a lawsuit.

An anti-abortion bill with a weird enforcement mechanism passed that makes abortions after six weeks of pregnancy illegal. The state won’t enforce the bill. Vigilantes will. Under the new law, anyone can sue anyone else for performing or facilitating an abortion that takes place after six weeks. They can sue for $10,000 each for as many abortions as the person participated in.

“Participating” doesn’t just mean performing the abortion or having an abortion. Under this law, driving someone to the clinic makes someone as guilty of participating as would be the person having the abortion.

Also unclear is how much proof someone needs to sue someone else. For example, if I said I drove someone to Planned Parenthood, with no proof it actually happened, could I be sued?

The only thing certain about the law is lots of litigation will follow. It’s already been before the U.S. Supreme Court twice, and that court let the law stand while challenges make their way through lower courts.

Also thanks to transphobes in the Legislature (and the Governor’s Mansion) trans youth are now banned from participating in school athletic activities under a new law passed by the Legislature — with the support of Log Cabin Republicans.

Once it goes into effect in the new year, schools will be required to use a student’s sex assigned at birth or soon after in determining who is eligible to play on what teams, and modified birth certificates adjusted to reflect the child’s actual gender identity will no longer be accepted.

Meanwhile, reports of bullying targeting LGBTQ youth are up in Texas. Spokespeople for the Trevor suicide hotline say through August the hotline received a record number of calls from Texas youth considering suicide.

About 1 in 100 children are born intersex and are difficult to identify at birth. That anomaly is not addressed by the law. Clearly the target was transgender youth.

Transgender youth, their parents and supporters from around the state protested and testified during each session of the Legislature this year. But few legislators listened, and the bill passed along partisan lines.

Meanwhile, the first day the Legislature convened, 360 Texans died of COVID-19. But during the regular session and the three special sessions, neither house considered bills involving pandemic relief for vulnerable Texans, bills that added money to the state’s top research institutions looking for treatments for the virus, bills that recognized the state’s overworked healthcare workers or bills that provided help to the state’s overburdened hospitals.

Instead, despite the masks required in chambers, legislators ignored the virus killing Texans.

It was the same with the unprecedented winter storm that left more than 200 people dead and as much as $130 billion in damages. Blackouts during record cold temperatures prompted bills addressing weatherization of power plants and maintenance of the grid. But there was no help for Texans who suffered damage to their homes. Businesses already struggling due to the pandemic got no relief as a result of the freeze. All bills died in committee.

— David Taffet