Two weeks ago, a House committee voted down an unconstitutional bill expanding the Drug-Free Workplace Act to authorize state agencies to require all state employees submit to random, suspicionless drug testing on a three-month rotating basis. HB 1205 by Rep. Jimmie Smith (R-Lecanto) is an attempt to extend, legislatively, to all state agencies, an executive order issued one year ago by Governor Rick Scott, which was mostly stayed when the ACLU challenged the constitutionality of random, suspicionless drug testing of public employees in Executive Branch agencies as a violation of the Fourth Amendment’s protections against unreasonable searches by the government. One of the Governor’s top legislative priorities for this year, HB 1205 was then reconsidered and passed the same committee, House Appropriations, last Tuesday largely on party lines. It also passed the House State Affairs Committee on Friday in a strict party line vote. The bill heads to the House floor next. The Governor has, through his attorneys, been lobbying House members heavily on this bill bringing into question whether agency compliance would in fact be voluntary.
A couple of weeks ago, we saw the temporary postponement of an omnibus anti-choice bill that would require abortion care providers to comply with a host of intrusive and burdensome regulations not imposed on other health care providers. Last week we saw the revival of both versions in the House and the Senate in the final week of committee meetings. SB 290 by Sen. Anitere Flores (R-Miami) and HB 277 by Rep. Rachel Burgin (R-Riverview) would require abortion clinics to be wholly owned and operated by a doctor or group of doctors and would impose a 24-hour waiting period before a woman can get an abortion. The Senate version was heard in Wednesday’s meeting of the Health Regulation Committee where a host of amendments designed to slow down the measure by Sen. Eleanor Sobel (D-Miami) were debated and withdrawn. With little public testimony and no debate, the committee voted along party lines, with one Republican dissenting, to pass the measure. On Thursday, the House’s Health and Human Services Committee woke up to a midnight amendment to HB 277 merging language from another bill relating to “fetal pain” into the body of this bill. The amendment was adopted without objection and after about an hour of debate, the committee voted along party lines to pass HB 277 out of its final committee. The House version now heads to the floor for second reading while the Senate version still has two more committee stops. However, look out for SB 290 to be withdrawn from those committees in the final weeks of session and put on the floor for debate. The two measures will have to be identical in order to be sent to the Governor for signature.
HB 367 by Rep. Betty Reed (D-Tampa) would ban the use of restraints on incarcerated pregnant women during labor, delivery, and post-partum recovery. A unanimous vote of the members of the House Judiciary Committee on Friday sends the measure to the House floor for debate and final passage. The measure passed the full Senate unanimously earlier this session and has recently garnered support from a broad spectrum of interest groups, including the Florida Mobile Midwives, the PACE Center for Girls, the Florida Catholic Conference, Planned Parenthood, the Florida Sheriffs Association, and the Department of Corrections.
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