Nebraska Sen. Machaela Cavanaugh. (Photo from Cavanaugh’s Facebook)
LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) | It was a mundane, unanimously supported bill on liquor taxation that saw state Sen. Machaela Cavanaugh take to the mic on the Nebraska Legislature floor last week. She offered her support, then spent the next three days discussing everything but the bill, including her favorite Girl Scout cookies, Omaha’s best doughnuts and the plot of the animated movie “Madagascar.”
She also spent that time railing against an unrelated bill that would outlaw gender-affirming therapies for those 18 and younger. It was the advancement of that bill out of committee that led Cavanaugh to promise three weeks ago to filibuster every bill that comes before the Legislature this year — even the ones she supports.
“If this Legislature collectively decides that legislating hate against children is our priority, then I am going to make it painful — painful for everyone,” the Omaha married mother of three said. “I will burn the session to the ground over this bill.”
True to her word, Cavanaugh has slowed the business of passing laws to a crawl by introducing amendment after amendment to every bill that makes it to the state Senate floor and taking up all eight debate hours allowed by the rules – even during the week she was suffering from strep throat. March 15 marked the halfway point of this year’s 90-day session, and not a single bill has passed thanks to Cavanaugh’s relentless filibustering.
Clerk of the Legislature Brandon Metzler said a delay like this has happened only a couple of times in the past 10 years.
“But what is really uncommon is the lack of bills that have advanced,” Metzler said. “Usually, we’re a lot further along the line than we’re seeing now.”
In fact, only 26 bills have advanced from the first of three rounds of debate required to pass a bill in Nebraska. There would normally be two to three times that number by mid-March, Metzler said. In the last three weeks since Cavanaugh began her bill blockade, only three bills have advanced.
The Nebraska bill and another that would ban trans people from using bathrooms and locker rooms or playing on sports teams that don’t align with the gender listed on their birth certificates are among roughly 150 bills targeting transgender people that have been introduced in state legislatures this year. Bans on gender-affirming care for minors have already been enacted this year in some Republican-led states, including South Dakota and Utah, and Republican governors in Tennessee and Mississippi are expected to sign similar bans into law. And Arkansas and Alabama have bans that were temporarily blocked by federal judges.
Cavanaugh’s effort has drawn the gratitude of the LGBTQ community, said Abbi Swatsworth, executive director of LGBTQ advocacy group OutNebraska. The organization has been encouraging members and others to inundate state lawmakers with calls and emails to support Cavanaugh’s effort and oppose bills targeting transgender people.
“We really see it as a heroic effort,” Swatsworth said of the filibuster. “It is extremely meaningful when an ally does more than pay lip service to allyship. She really is leading this charge.”
Both Cavanaugh and the conservative Omaha lawmaker who introduced the trans bill, state Sen. Kathleen Kauth, said they’re seeking to protect children. Cavanaugh cited a 2021 survey by the Trevor Project, a nonprofit focused on suicide prevention efforts among LGBTQ youth, that found that 58% of transgender and nonbinary youth in Nebraska seriously considered suicide in the previous year, and more than 1 in 5 reported that they had attempted it.
“This is a bill that attacks trans children,” Cavanaugh said. “It is legislating hate. It is legislating meanness. The children of Nebraska deserve to have somebody stand up and fight for them.”
