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Texas will pay bounty hunters $5K to find performers who 'exhibit a gender different than recorded
at birth’ in new drag ban billhttps://www.reckon.news/lgbtq/2023/03/texas-will-pay-bounty-hunters-5k-to-find-performers-who-exhibit-a-gender-different-than-recorded-at-birth-in-new-drag-ban-bill.html
Texas’ HB4378 would grant the ability for private citizens in the state to sue those who perform in drag wherever children are present. Critics of the bill note that this will establish a bounty-hunting culture that targets not only drag queens, but also trans people.
The bill, sponsored by Republican Houston-area Rep. Steve Toth on Mar. 9 details that “drag performance” means a performance wherein a person “exhibits a gender that is different than the performer’s gender recorded at birth using clothing, makeup, or other physical markers.”
Should a plaintiff win, the court would compensate them for damages that include “psychological, emotional, economic, and physical harm”, attorney fees, as well as statutory damages of $5,000. The bill also notes that civil action can be brought up to ten years after the performance.
The bill harkens back to when the state proposed SB8 in 2021, which gave private citizens of Texas the right to sue those involved with any part of an abortion after six weeks of pregnancy. In the case of HB4378, while Republicans continue to position themselves as the defenders of “parental rights,” some believe the bill is set to fail by logic.
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https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/2021-the-best-and-worst-legislators/#toth
Representative Steve Toth
R–The Woodlands
By the beginning of the session, conservatives from coast to coast were up in arms about something called critical race theory. Though no two citizens could agree on what it was or how it might corrupt our fragile youth, Republicans in the Legislature—old hands at this sort of thing—would surely make quick work of it. Then came Steve Toth.
Other Republican-run Legislatures have passed broad bills that essentially tell teachers not to be racist—pointless but harmless. Toth’s bill, by contrast, was a laundry list of complaints and diktats written in an unnecessarily complicated way. Among many other things, it stipulated that teachers may not “require an understanding” of the New York Times Magazine’s “1619 Project.”
Toth told the House he wanted to promote “racial harmony” by stripping “neo-Marxism” out of schools. But he bungled his proposal from start to finish. “The worst handling of a bill I’ve ever seen,” said one Republican. “Pathetic,” said another. When it came to the floor, Toth seemed unable to answer basic questions from critics. When he challenged Democrat Nicole Collier to show where slavery was mentioned in the Constitution, she did so effortlessly. In an aside, he mentioned that some of his historical research came from The Five Thousand Year Leap, a widely discredited 1981 book written by a supporter of the far-right John Birch Society.
As the floor debate spiraled into an argument about American history, Republicans and Democrats loaded up the bill with amendments, adding all sorts of “lessons” they’d like to see taught. Toth seemed to surrender, slowing down like a spent windup toy. The Senate piled on, appending language that violated House rules. Intentional or not, the out-of-bounds changes allowed opponents in the House to deploy a seemingly fatal point of order. But then, a plot twist! Three days before the end of the session, senators used a procedurally questionable (and highly unusual) tactic to revive the measure. Toth’s civics education bill, touted as promoting respect for the U.S. Constitution, passed—but only by circumventing the Texas Constitution.
Representative Steve Toth
R–The Woodlands
By the beginning of the session, conservatives from coast to coast were up in arms about something called critical race theory. Though no two citizens could agree on what it was or how it might corrupt our fragile youth, Republicans in the Legislature—old hands at this sort of thing—would surely make quick work of it. Then came Steve Toth.
Other Republican-run Legislatures have passed broad bills that essentially tell teachers not to be racist—pointless but harmless. Toth’s bill, by contrast, was a laundry list of complaints and diktats written in an unnecessarily complicated way. Among many other things, it stipulated that teachers may not “require an understanding” of the New York Times Magazine’s “1619 Project.”
Toth told the House he wanted to promote “racial harmony” by stripping “neo-Marxism” out of schools. But he bungled his proposal from start to finish. “The worst handling of a bill I’ve ever seen,” said one Republican. “Pathetic,” said another. When it came to the floor, Toth seemed unable to answer basic questions from critics. When he challenged Democrat Nicole Collier to show where slavery was mentioned in the Constitution, she did so effortlessly. In an aside, he mentioned that some of his historical research came from The Five Thousand Year Leap, a widely discredited 1981 book written by a supporter of the far-right John Birch Society.
As the floor debate spiraled into an argument about American history, Republicans and Democrats loaded up the bill with amendments, adding all sorts of “lessons” they’d like to see taught. Toth seemed to surrender, slowing down like a spent windup toy. The Senate piled on, appending language that violated House rules. Intentional or not, the out-of-bounds changes allowed opponents in the House to deploy a seemingly fatal point of order. But then, a plot twist! Three days before the end of the session, senators used a procedurally questionable (and highly unusual) tactic to revive the measure. Toth’s civics education bill, touted as promoting respect for the U.S. Constitution, passed—but only by circumventing the Texas Constitution.
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