Crossover Day: Budget, juvenile justice, birth certificate sex designations prioritized

ANNAPOLIS  — The Maryland House of Delegates and Senate shuffled through dozens of bills Monday as both chambers inched toward the General Assembly’s Crossover Day deadline, passing and debating legislation that ranged from workplace regulations to juvenile justice policy.

Crossover Day marks the last of the 90-day legislative session when a bill can pass and is guaranteed a hearing in the opposite chamber. Although bills can still be approved if they hit that mark after Crossover Day, their chance of making it to Gov. Wes Moore‘s desk is much smaller. 

Both chambers were expected to legislate into Monday evening.

The House kicked off in strong force Monday morning, beginning its first session of the day by introducing the budget and its companion bill to the floor.

As explained by House Appropriations Committee Chair Ben Barnes, D-Anne Arundel and Prince George’s, the House version of the budget includes $200 million for behavioral health services in public schools, $1.6 billion in state funding for Medicaid, $10 million for information technology and outreach staffing to limit the blows President Donald Trump’s administration has landed on social safety net programming like SNAP, and $280 million to aid low-income households struggling with utility bills.

Additionally, the budget would restore $23 million for the Development Disabilities Administration and invest $117 million in private-sector industries.

The Senate chamber passed a $70.7 billion budget bill Wednesday, transforming the $1.4 billion budgetary shortfall the legislature began with in January into a $250 million surplus.

Beyond the surplus, the budget as it entered the House was poised to leave $2.2 billion in the state’s Rainy Day Fund, reduce General Fund spending and limit budget growth to around 1% — all without increasing taxes and fees

Barnes had both bills special-ordered to Wednesday to allow delegates a full day to draft any floor amendments they plan to offer.

Beyond the budget, here is a glimpse at policies the House and Senate discussed Monday:

Politics, religion in the workplace

The Senate passed legislation that would ban employers in Maryland from disciplining their employees for refusing to attend, participate in or listen to meetings in which their employer discusses their political or religious opinions.

Under the bill, political matters include political parties, elections, proposals to alter legislation or public policy, or decisions to support a specific political party or any civic, community or labor organization. Religious matters include anything related to a religious belief, affiliation, practice or the decision to enter into a specific religion.

The policy would be enforced by the Maryland Department of Labor’s commissioner of labor and industry. Employees would have 180 days from the incident to file a complaint. The commissioner must attempt to informally solve the matter through mediation after investigating the complaint.

If a resolution can’t be reached and the commissioner determines the employer violated the legislation, they could be subject to a civil penalty of up to $10,000 for a first violation and $25,000 for subsequent violations. 

The bill would not prohibit employers from using such speech or discussing those topics at meetings they host but would regulate their ability to discipline their employees for refusing to listen to it. If discussion of a religious or political topic is necessary to the role an employee holds, that speech on behalf of the employer would be protected under the legislation.

Employers of religious organizations, governmental units hosting employee orientation meetings and those immune from employment discrimination protections under federal or state law would be exempt from the policy. 

Before the bill’s passage, Sen. Chrisopher West, R-Baltimore County and Carroll, pointed to similar legislation that passed in California but was temporarily blocked by the federal courts on the grounds that it violated the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

“This bill is not about workplace conditions,” said West. “This bill is about speech, and the speech in particular is religious speech and political speech.”

Sen. Clarence Lam, D-Howard and Anne Arundel, argued that the bill doesn’t curtail the First Amendment rights of employers, it simply says that employees would be protected from being fired for not attending captive audience meetings.

“It is a workplace regulation. It is a workplace condition,” he said. “It would otherwise create a hostile work environment. We, as a state, have regulated workplace conditions.”

The legislation passed on a vote of 31-12.

Limits to solitary confinement for minors

The House passed a bill Monday morning that would limit the situations under which children held in Department of Juvenile Services could be held in restrictive housing.

Under the legislation, these minors would not be able to be held in restrictive or seclusionary housing in the agency’s facilities for disciplinary, punitive or retaliatory purposes, or because of staffing shortages.

Children could be held in seclusion only if all other less-restrictive measures have been attempted, they are visually inspected every 15 minutes, and they are provided access to regular meals, snacks, water, a bathroom, educational services and hygiene products.

An initial behavioral and medical health assessment must be conducted on a child held in restrictive housing within 30 minutes of their placement. They would be required to be released to the rest of the population after it is determined that they are no longer of any immediate or substantial threat.

House Minority Leader Jason Buckel, R-Allegany, pointed to the rural locations of many of the state’s juvenile facilities and raised concern about the requirement that children placed in seclusion must undergo a mental and physical health assessment within 30 minutes.

“…[T]hirty minutes is basically, you’ve gotta be there,” Buckle said, noting that it may be difficult for appropriate staff to be on-site in time to provide these assessments. “How do they comply?”

The bill’s sponsor Del. Gabriel M. Moreno, D-Howard, responded that the legislation would require the Department of Juvenile Services to establish its own regulations to enact the policies under the bill.

The legislation passed on a vote of 104-31.

Birth certificate alterations

Before adjourning for a break in the afternoon, the Senate gave preliminary approval to the Birth Certificate Modernization Act, which would repeal the mandate that licensed health care practitioners determine if someone’s sex designation should be changed on their birth certificate.

Rather, that individual — or their parent, guardian or legal representative — would need to make a written request for a new birth certificate with a different sex designation to the Maryland Department of Health under penalty of perjury.

After protracted debate over child custody and family law — and a narrowly failed attempt to kill the bill on the floor through a procedural vote Friday — Lam, the bill’s sponsor, amended the legislation to require that the request not be made for fraudulent or unlawful purposes if a parent or guardian is making the change on behalf of a minor.

“I’m not the attorney here, but the courts and juries are asked every day in a court of law to be able to make decisions about what a defendant’s intent was based on any testimony or evidence presented in that courtroom, and I’m confident that our judicial system would be able to make that same assessment in this case here, as well,” said Lam. 

The legislation was also amended on the floor Monday to require that the Maryland Department of Health maintain a database of birth information histories, which include birthdates and sex designations at birth, for individuals who have their sex changed on their birth certificates. Those records would be sealed and would not be subject to inspection under the Maryland Public Information Act.

The bill ultimately passed Monday night on a vote of 24 to 16.