Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Please Call to Support NC Parental Rights

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North Carolina House bill 711 (H711), the Parental Rights Act, is still alive (in amended form), but has not budged since it landed in the Senate Rules Committee on May 16. We need your help today to try to move it forward again before the session ends on June 13.

Although H711 passed the House on May 15 by an overwhelming vote of 109-2, the Senate Rules Committee has something of a reputation as “the place bills go to die.” We believe your phone calls can help H711 to escape that fate and move toward passage.

Here is what we need you to do:

1. If your state senator is on the Rules Committee, please call and urge them to take up H711 and vote “Do pass.” Tell them that parental rights are too important to leave to judicial whim. It is the responsibility of the legislature to make law, and this is a law long past due.

The members of the committee are as follows (click for contact info):

Sen. Tom Apodaca, chair Sen. Chad Barefoot
Sen. Peter Brunstetter, vice chairman Sen. Dan Blue
Sen. Andrew Brock Sen. Harry Brown
Sen. Ben Clark Sen. Kathy Harrington
Sen. Ralph Hise Sen. Brent Jackson
Sen. Clark Jenkins Sen. Wesley Meredith
Sen. Martin Nesbitt, Jr. Sen. Buck Newton
Sen. Bill Rabon Sen. Josh Stein    
 
2. If your senator is not on the Rules Committee, call their office anyway and ask them to use any influence they might have to get H711 out of committee. Tell them parental rights are too important to allow one committee to keep it from seeing debate and a vote in the full Senate. You might also mention that the House voted to adopt it by an overwhelming 109-2 vote. Finally, ask them to strongly support H711 when it does make its way to the Senate floor.

You can find your senator and his contact information by visiting the NC website here.

Background
House bill 711 would “require[e] the Legislative Research Commission to study issues relating to parental rights.” While this is a letdown from our original Parental Rights Statute, it has the potential to lead to the introduction of a new statute next year. The bill allows that “[i]n conducting it study, the Commission may study…[l]egislation which may be necessary to ensure the protection and preservation of parental rights.”

We are hopeful this study will lead to the conclusion that our proposed statute is a good idea for North Carolina. But for that to happen, the bill needs to be approved by the Senate.

If this bill fails, any attempt to pass the parental rights bill in the future will have to start from scratch; if this bill passes, the committee may well bring a recommendation that would give our statute a solid head start either next year or the following. (There is no way at this point that our original legislation can make it through the 2013 session.)

Thank you for taking the time to make this very important call today to protect parental rights in the Tarheel State!

Sincerely,

Michael Ramey
Director of Communications & Research

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