(The Center Square) – Bail reform, charter school limitations and Medicaid-covered fertility preservation services are just some of the changes Democrats in Michigan are attempting to push through the lame duck session before Republicans take back the House in January.
“For the past two years, Michigan House Democrats have passed an agenda that puts people first,” state Rep. Jasper Martus, D-Flushing said on X following the release of the General Election results. “As we approach the end of this term, we will finish how we started.”
The flurry of legislation includes many Democratic wish-list items that are unlikely to pass in a divided legislature, including mandating health insurers cover infertility treatments and prescription birth control; allowing undocumented migrants to obtain driver’s licenses; and enacting more stringent hate crime prohibitions that would cover harassment based on sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression.
House Republican Leader and incoming Speaker Rep. Matt Hall, R-Richland Township, criticized Democrats’ efforts and said his goal for House Republicans next year is to bring back government and fiscal oversight.
“The concept where there’s a period of time where they come in after the election and ram through all night very unpopular ideas that they don’t want to run before the election, should concern everybody,” Hall said on WOODTV. “They just lost their majority because of ideas like the ones they’re going to try to ram through lame duck.”
Other bills that Democrats introduced or revived in November include HB 6068 which would update how sex education is taught in schools; HB 6034, which would establish the “Public Library Freedom to Read Act” to counteract book bans; HB 6076 and 6075, which respectively would create an “energy reliability fund” and expand access to the state’s energy assistance program; and HB 6091 which would forbid any educational institution from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression.
