Statehouse Roundup: Bills targeting CRT, transgender girls pass the Indiana House

Statehouse Roundup: Week four of the 2022 Indiana legislative session

By: Ray Steele

INDIANAPOLIS — The clock is ticking precariously toward halftime of the 2022 session of the Indiana General Assembly.

State lawmakers are scrambling to grab the ball and run with their bills, hoping to cross next week’s goal line to keep them alive for half No. 2.

The House passed two of its most controversial bills this week.

House Bill 1134 is aimed the teaching of Critical Race Theory in K-12 schools. Critical Race Theory is not taught in K-12 schools, but it has become a catchall phrase for anything dealing with race.

Among other things, it bars teachers from teaching things that make students uncomfortable. We don’t know whether that applies only to history or subjects like calculus, which probably makes a lot of students uncomfortable.

House Bill 1041 also passed. That’s the ban on transgender girls playing girls sports in grades 12 and below — something else that isn’t get happening in Indiana.

Both bills could face an uphill climb in the Senate.

There’s always something at the Statehouse that flies under the radar, but one bill in particular is quite important.

The Senate this week passed Senate Bill 3, which contains administrative procedures that Gov. Eric Holcomb says are needed for him to finally lift the statewide pandemic health emergency. It now goes to the House, which already passed some of those procedures.

However, House Republicans also attached a ban on the ability of private businesses to enforce COVID-19 vaccine mandates. Senate Republicans didn’t seem keen to go that far.

This week, several groups called on lawmakers to give a key right to tenants when it comes to dealing with their landlords. Those groups are going to be left waiting longer for those rights. Senate Bill 320 is dead for the session and will instead go to a summer study committee.

The bill would have given tenants the right to not pay rent if their landlords failed to make repairs to their homes.

Indiana is one of only five states that do not have that type of law on the books.