ALEC 2024 Conference Report
Above: Parental Rights Foundation President Michael Ramey with Ohio State Representative Sarah Fowler Arthur.
I had a fun and productive week last week at the 51st American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) Annual Meeting in Denver, Colorado.
During the week, I was honored to meet several of my heroes, including our bill sponsor, Rep. Beryl Amedee of Louisiana, and Senator Patricia Rucker of West Virginia. I was also excited to meet a freshman representative from Ohio who has talked with us over the last nine years as a (now former) member of the Ohio state school board, Rep. Sarah Fowler Arthur. And I met a Virginia delegate who is practically my neighbor!
I also got to meet Rep. Jeremy Faison, who championed the excellent Parents’ Bill of Rights signed into law in Tennessee on May 28.
A “Divine Appointment”
On the first day of the event, I had what some might call a “Divine Appointment.” I chose to attend a Round Table discussion on Mental Health, hoping that the speakers might cover a topic touching on parental rights. Questions like who gets to decide whether and how to medicate children with mental health issues, or how to meet their mental health needs through other means, create a critical intersection between mental health issues and parental rights.
Unfortunately, that discussion never came up; it appeared I had wasted my hour.
But there was an Illinois lawmaker sitting beside me, and I got the chance to speak to him after the meeting. I told him about the model bill I would be bringing on Friday, and how it’s based on Illinois Senate Bill 378 that could come up in Illinois’s post-veto session in September. I told him it had broad bipartisan support, but I don’t think he quite realized what I meant by that.
Yet, as I was speaking to him, he pulled up the bill info on his phone. That’s when he commented, “I see names listed in support of this bill that I never thought I would ever see on the same list supporting anything. I’m definitely going to give this a closer look!”
That moment alone was worth the whole hour!
Presenting Our Model Bill
The primary reason I made the trip, though, was to present our model bill to the Health & Human Services Task Force, which met on Friday morning. The agenda included several presentations, followed by consideration of eight model bills—five for consideration to be adopted as models, and three for consideration to “sunset.”
So that you may know ALEC is not just a “rubber stamp” organization, I will tell you that one bill passed by a vote of 10-9 among the lawmakers present and then a vote of 4-3 among the private members (i.e. not legislators) present. Had just one vote shifted among either membership, it would not have passed.
Our bill, on the other hand, received unanimous support from both groups of voters.
So, what is our model bill?
I will give you a complete rundown of the bill and why we need it in next week’s email. But to sum up, it would provide balance to family courts in medical child abuse cases by requiring child abuse pediatricians to identify their forensic (evidence-gathering) role to parents suspected of abuse; by requiring family courts to accept and consider medical second opinions that may favor the parents; and by requiring child abuse agencies to have a second doctor “check their work” if the doctor they would usually go to also happens to be the one who called in the suspicion of abuse in the first place.
The first section of the bill is modeled, as I mentioned, on SB 378 in Illinois, while the second and third sections are modeled after a law that Texas passed in 2022.
So, what does this mean going forward?
With its adoption at ALEC, the Family Rights in Medical Investigations model bill will be added to the other models on our website and available for state lawmakers all over the country. Some on the left may want to take up the bill because of the Illinois effort and the fact that part of the bill was drafted by Chicago-area attorney Diane Redleaf, author of They Took the Kids Last Night. And those on the right will feel comfortable taking up the bill because of its adoption by ALEC.
I look forward to working with any lawmaker who, in the upcoming session, wants to introduce in their state legislature a bill based on our model. And if they need to enlist bipartisan support, I’ll be happy to connect them with our coalition partners across the aisle, as well.
Together, we just may be able to make hospital emergency departments a safe place for parents to take their children once again.
Thank you for supporting us and making my journey to the ALEC conference possible!