“Pro-Bullying” Bill With Religious Harassment Protections May Be Changed

A Michigan anti-bullying bill that became a “pro-bullying” bill, and called a blueprint for how to bully and get away with it, will be changed to remove the protections for religious or moral-based harassment, says the bill’s most out-spoken advocate. Michigan State Senator, Democrat Gretchen Whitmer, said in an interview yesterday that after meeting with Republican lawmakers she believes the bill’s language will be fixed.

Via MLive:

“It looks like they are poised to do that,” Whitmer told WJR’s Paul W. Smith on Tuesday morning, an election day across the state. “I’m glad to say that there are people on both sides of the aisle that believe that we should not legitimize excuses for tormenting a student in school.”

Last week, Senate legislators came to blows over SB 137, or Matt’s Safe Schools Law, after Democrats accused Republicans of creating a “license to bully” after the following language was added to the bill, which would otherwise put tougher restrictions on bullying in schools altogether if passed into law:

Amendment of the constitution of the United States or under article I of the state constitution of 1963 of a school employee, school volunteer, pupil, or a pupil’s parent or guardian. This section does not prohibit a statement of a sincerely held religious belief or moral conviction of a school employee, school volunteer, pupil, or a pupil’s parent or guardian.
“Frankly, no one I talked to has any idea what the Senate Republicans were thinking when they decided to put this language in. We need to protect our kids. In the name and memory of Matt Epling, we need to do the right thing,” Whitmer said.

Senator Whitmer said last week in an impassioned speech, “the saddest and sickest irony of this whole thing is that it’s called ‘Matt’s Safe School Law’. And after the way that you’ve gutted it, it wouldn’t have done a damn thing to save Matt!”

Yesterday Todd Heywood at the Michigan Messenger quoted a First Amendment scholar who said the legislation was “badly drafted.”

“The bill does not prohibit bullying. It does not apply to students. It does not require any student to do anything or to refrain from doing anything. It requires school boards to adopt anti-bullying policies,” Douglas Laycock, Robert E. Scott Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Virginia Law School. “It does not require the school boards to include language protecting First Amendment rights. In fact, subsection 8 appears to be entirely meaningless. It says that this section does not abridge rights under the First Amendment (which it could not do even if it tried), and this section does not prohibit statements of religious belief or moral conviction. But this section doesn’t prohibit any other statements either. It doesn’t prohibit bullying statements.”

Hopefully, the bill soon will respect the name of Matt Epling, and all children who suffer bullying, regardless of the religious or moral motivation of their tormentors.

(h/t: Towleroad)