Virginia Lawmakers Agree: Banning Insurers From Covering Abortion Hurts Low-Income Women

This week, Virginia became the 21st state to restrict coverage for abortion services in the health insurance marketplaces set up under Obamacare. Over the past several years, that’s become an increasingly common tactic to restrict abortion access, as anti-choice lawmakers rush to prevent insurers from being able to cover the cost of the legal medical procedure.

Even though the measure banning abortion coverage — which was an amendment that Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) tacked onto a broader General Assembly bill — ultimately passed the legislature, it still sparked a debate that cut across party lines. Republican and Democratic lawmakers both suggested that preventing women from using their insurance coverage to pay for abortion services is ultimately a class issue, a point confirmed by women’s health advocates:

But members of both parties agree that the measure’s biggest impact will likely fall along class lines, landing hardest on some of the people the federal health-care overhaul was designed to help: working women who barely get by on their incomes.

“Those people that can afford insurance outside of the exchanges will be able to buy whatever they want. People that can’t afford to buy outside of the exchange will have to buy policies that don’t cover these procedures,” said Sen. John C. Watkins (R-Powhatan), who sponsored the bill but opposed the amendment by Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R). “It just sets up a class situation, in my mind.” [...]

Cianti Stewart-Reid, executive director of Planned Parenthood Advocates of Virginia, said that the only real effect of the amendment would be to limit access for women who make too much money to qualify for Medicaid but not enough to purchase their insurance on the private market.

“What it means is that women — by and large low-income but working women in Virginia — won’t have access to abortion,” Stewart-Reid said.

Abortion access is, of course, an incredibly important class issue. Of all the women who have abortions in the United States, 42 percent fall below the federal poverty line — partly because low-income women often still struggle to access affordable and reliable contraception. And when women are denied the opportunity to have a legal abortion, that greatly increases their risk of falling into poverty.

And the restrictions that state lawmakers pile on top of women seeking to have an abortion often hit low-income women the hardest. For example, 24-hour waiting periods — which force women to make multiple trips to a clinic — ultimately mean women are paying the costs for the additional transportation, the additional childcare, and the additional lost income during the time off of work. On top of the hundreds of dollars that an abortion procedure can cost out-of-pocket, that quickly adds up to be too much for poor women who are already struggling to pay the bills.

Virginia lawmakers were correct to identify the class dynamics exacerbated by unnecessary restrictions on abortion coverage. Unfortunately for the women in the state, however, their anti-abortion governor is expected to sign the legislation into law.

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Virginia Lawmakers Approve Strict Measure Requiring Voters To Show Photo ID

After President Obama won the state in November, Virginia Attorney General and gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli (R) called for stricter photo ID requirements because Obama “can’t win a state where photo ID is required.” On Wednesday, Virginia lawmakers proved they were listening to Cuccinelli, voting to adopt a photo ID requirement among the strictest in the country.

During the 2012 election cycle, voter ID laws were a huge hit with Republican-controlled state legislatures — but somewhat less popular with the courts. Judges struck down a number of voter ID laws due to the disproportionate impact they would have for minorities, seniors, and low-income voters. Virginia’s voter ID law was one of the few that survived review by the Justice Department, as its list of acceptable ID was flexible enough that it would not harm minority voting rights.

If Gov. Bob McDonnell (R-VA) signs these new requirements into law, voters will have to present a government-issued card bearing their photo, such as a drivers license or a passport. If they do not have a photo ID, they will have to fill out a provisional ballot that will be discarded if they cannot produce the required ID by the Friday after an election:

On a 65-34 vote, the House completed legislative action on a strict photo identification bill that would require all voters to present identification such as a drivers license or passport bearing a photo of the holder to cast a regular ballot. Those without it would have to vote a provisional ballot that would count only if the voter could provide local election officials with the required identification by noon on the Friday after the election. Only one Democrat supported the measure.

An almost identical measure was blocked in Texas under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which requires certain regions with a history of discrimination to “pre-clear” any election law changes with the DOJ. An appeals court determined Texas’ law would clearly hurt minority and low-income communities, who are much less likely to have the requisite identification. Under Section 5, Virginia’s new requirements would almost certainly be blocked by the DOJ. However, the US Supreme Court will hear arguments next week on the validity of this section of the VRA. If the court strikes down Section 5, minority voters will be left vulnerable in Virginia, Texas, and other states that targeted minority voting power during the Jim Crow era.

Earlier this month, Virginians endured colossal lines on Election Day, with some voters still waiting hours after polls officially closed. Still, lawmakers seem convinced that voting is too easy in Virginia. On Wednesday, the House also passed a bill to purge any non-citizens on Virginia’s voter rolls by accessing a federal immigration database. Florida and Colorado fought costly legal battles for access to this same database, but failed to find almost any confirmed non-citizen voters.

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BREAKING: Republican Virginia House Speaker Kills GOP Senate Gerrymander Scheme

Virginia House of Delegates Speaker Bill Howell (R)

Virginia House of Delegates Speaker William Howell (R) killed the Inauguration Day sneak attack by Senate Republicans who hoped to pass a massive mid-decade gerrymander. Howell ruled that the Senate’s amendment to a House bill making minor technical corrections to the House legislative maps were not germane, as it was a “vast rewrite” and would “stray dramatically” from the legislation’s original purpose.

When a Republican colleague requested a ruling on the amendment’s germaneness, Howell told his colleagues:

[Germaneness] prevents the presentation to the House of propositions that may not be reasonably anticipated, and for which they may not be properly prepared. A proposition of a narrow or limited scope may not be amended by a proposition of a more general nature… even though they might be related… I am going to rule that Senate amendments are not germane and out of order.

The Senate passed the controversial maps on January 21 on a party-lines vote. The measure passed 20-19 because Senator Henry Marsh (D), a legendary civil rights leader, was absent attending President Obama’s inauguration.

Virginia Senate Republican Leader Tommy Norment blasted Howell’s ruling Wednesday, saying: “The entire Senate Republican Caucus is deeply disappointed by Speaker Howell’s unilateral ruling today.” Norment added: “The Virginia Senate Republican Caucus remains committed to correcting the egregious hyperpartisan [2011] gerrymander that has resulted in the current tortuously drawn Senate districts.” The “hyperpartisan” maps passed on a 32-5 bipartisan vote in 2011, with Norment voting for the maps.

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Virginia Lawmakers Approve Bill Forcing Universities To Fund Student Groups That Discriminate

The Virginia House of Delegates voted 80-19 today to approve HB1617, a bill that would invite any religious or political university student group to discriminate as they please and still require the campus to providing them funding and access to campus facilities. This would make LGBT students particularly vulnerable to discrimination because universities’ protections for sexual orientation are not enforceable under Virginia law. Under this bill, though, even a KKK chapter could hypothetically form, use campus resources, and openly discriminate against non-white and non-Christian students on campus.

Here’s the text of the bill:

To the extent allowed by state and federal law:

1. A religious or political student organization may determine that ordering the organization’s internal affairs, selecting the organization’s leaders and members, defining the organization’s doctrines, and resolving the organization’s disputes are in furtherance of the organization’s religious or political mission and that only persons committed to that mission should conduct such activities; and

2. No public institution of higher education that has granted recognition of and access to any student organization or group shall discriminate against any such student organization or group that exercises its rights pursuant to subdivision 1.

On most college campuses, student organizations must maintain a constitution that conforms to the university’s procedures, including its nondiscrimination policies. For example, James Madison University requires that all organizations obey the “policies, rules, regulations, and standards of the university,” such as its nondiscrimination policy, which includes sexual orientation. The College of William & Mary offers similar protections and requires student groups be open to all students.

Such policies are key because student organizations receive funding and use campus resources (like meeting spaces) that are funded by fees that all students pay; thus, all students deserve equal access to those campus clubs. Nondiscrimination policies have become a source of contention for conservative Christian student groups, like at Tennessee’s Vanderbilt University and New York’s University of Buffalo, who wish to exclude gay students from membership. In the 2010 case Christian Legal Society v. Martinez, the U.S. Supreme Court narrowly answered this question in favor of nondiscrimination policies, ruling that “all-comers” policies are viewpoint neutral, and thus are no more unfair to Christian groups than any other student groups.

Conservatives have argued, however that nondiscrimination policies allow for “hostile takeovers“ — in which students with opposing views infiltrate and assume power in the organization — but there’s no evidence to suggest that this is plausible, let alone that it ever happened. Members of an organization are still allowed to vote for their group’s leaders, even with discriminatory intent, if all students remain eligible. Any student group that can’t persist on its own merits probably doesn’t warrant use of student fees in the first place.

All 19 votes against the bill were cast by Democrats. It now advances to the Senate for committee consideration.

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BREAKING: Virginia Senate Committee Overwhelmingly Kills Electoral Vote Rigging Scheme

Virginia State Senator Charles "Bill" Carrico Sr. (R)

The bill, as written, would have awarded 11 of Virginia’s 13 electoral votes to the winner of each of the state’s 11 heavily gerrymandered Congressional Districts. The remaining two electors would have been awarded to whoever won the majority of Congressional Districts. Under this scheme, Mitt Romney would have received 9 Virginia electors to Obama’s 4, even though Barack Obama won the state by four points.

All seven committee Democrats voted to “pass by indefinitely” (kill the bill) as did Republican Senators Mark Obenshain, Ralph Smith, Jill Holtzman Vogel, and Jeff McWaters. Four Republicans (Sens. Stephen Martin, Bryce Reeves, Tom Garrett, and the patron Bill Carrico) supported the scheme.

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Four Ways The Virginia GOP’s Redistricting Power Grab Could Be Stopped By Legal Action

Yesterday, when Virginia state Sen. Henry Marsh (D) was away from the state capitol to attend President Obama’s inauguration, Virginia Republicans rushed through a gerrymandering bill that that could potentially transform the evenly divided Virginia senate into a 27-13 Republican majority. The Virginia senate is currently split 20-20 between Democrats and Republicans, and Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling (R) indicated that he would have opposed the gerrymander if given the tiebreaking vote. Thus the bill would not have passed if Republicans had not used Sen. Marsh’s absence to push it through when a key opposing vote was absent.

This is not an isolated incident. A memo from the Republican State Leadership Committee openly bragged that U.S. House Republicans kept their majority because of gerrymandering, and, indeed, these gerrymanders were so effective that Democratic House candidates would need to win the national popular vote by more than 7 points in order to take back the chamber. Meanwhile, top Republicans are also pushing a plan to rig future presidential elections by reallocating electoral votes in blue states to the Republican candidates for president.

Nevertheless, it is not certain that the Virginia GOP’s underhanded move to gerrymander the state senate will survive contact with the courts or the Department of Justice. Although the fate of any challenge to this partisan gerrymander is uncertain, here are four ways the gerrymander could still go down:

No Mid-Decade Gerrymanders: The Virginia Constitution provides that “[t]he General Assembly shall reapportion the Commonwealth into electoral districts in accordance with this section in the year 2011 and every ten years thereafter.” When a constitution specifically instructs a legislature to take a particular action or grants a specific power to those lawmakers, courts sometimes read it to implicitly prevent them from taking other actions. Thus, when the state constitution instructs Virginia lawmakers to redistrict every ten years, it implicitly instructs them not to engage in mid-decade gerrymanders, and the new maps are invalid. The Virginia Supreme Court has not weighed in on this question, but a Virginia trial court concluded in 2012 that one purpose of this provision in the state constitution was “to preclude ‘politically convenient redistricting whenever one political party or the other might gain the upper hand and find it attractive to redraw political boundaries to consolidate power.’”Voting Rights Act: The Voting Rights Act not only forbids state voting laws which have a discriminatory impact on minorities, Section Five of the Act also requires new voting laws in some parts of the county to “pre-clear” those requirements with the Department of Justice or a federal court in Washington, DC before they can take effect. Much of Virginia remains subject to Section Five, so the maps could be stopped if they diminish minority voting strength in the covered areas. There’s only one problem: the conservatives on the Roberts Court are widely expected to strike down Section Five before the Court adjourns this June.What’s Left Of The Voting Rights Act: Even if the conservative justices strike down Section Five, Section Two of the Voting Right Act still prohibits redistricting that dilutes minority voting strength. To the extent that the new GOP maps dilute the minority vote, they could be subject to a lawsuit under Section Two. Such a lawsuit, however, would ultimately appeal to the same Republican-dominated Supreme Court that is expected to strike down Section Five.The U.S. Supreme Court Could Actually Do It’s Job: As a final note, the entire purpose of partisan gerrymanders is to weaken the voting power of people who hold one viewpoint (in this case, Democrats) while strengthening that of people who hold an opposing view (in this case, Republicans). This is a textbook violation of the First Amendment’s prohibition on viewpoint discrimination. Nevertheless, the Supreme Court’s conservatives have refused to even consider cases challenging partisan gerrymanders, although Justice Kennedy suggested that his opposition to gerrymandering lawsuits is not entirely absolute.

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Virginia Republicans Work To Implement Obamacare, Despite GOP Governor’s Opposition To Reform

Even though President Obama will be inaugurated for his second term on Monday, GOP lawmakers across the country are still in denial about the fact that Obama’s re-election secured the future of his landmark health reform law. Republicans have been digging in their heels against reform, allowing deadlines to come and go without making any progress toward implementing the Affordable Care Act in their states.

But even in states led by GOP politicians who remain resistant to health reform, like Virginia’s Gov. Bob McDonnell (R), some Republican officials are taking matters into their own hands to prepare for Obamacare’s implementation. As the Huffington Post reports, Virginia Republicans — including some members of the governor’s own administration — are working behind the scenes to plan a health exchange, despite Gov. Bob McDonnell’s resistance to reform:

McDonnell surprised no one when he decided last month Virginia wouldn’t create a health insurance exchange under Obamacare. The trouble, though, is that health care reform is coming to the state and its residents whether Virginia’s Republican politicians want it or not. It’s a reality Republican opponents of Obama’s health care law are facing across the country.

That’s why the McDonnell administration and some GOP legislators are working behind the scenes to get ready, as the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported Wednesday.

Against McDonnell’s stated position that the federal government should do all the work to set up and maintain a health insurance exchange, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported some Republican legislators are pushing for the state to work in partnership with federal authorities, an option seven other states including neighboring West Virginia and North Carolina already have chosen. Twenty-five states, including Virginia, will have a federally operated exchange while 17 states and the District of Columbia will run their own. Mississippi’s case is still up in the air.

Virginia isn’t alone. Even before the presidential election, conservative officials in states like Mississippi, Kansas, and Arizona were working under the radar to quietly prepare their states for the inevitable wave of health care reforms. Those Republican lawmakers have begun to clash with the other members of their party because they realize that resisting Obamacare may not be in their best interests anymore — particularly when it comes to setting up exchanges, which the federal government will simply step in and do for the states that refuse to do it themselves.

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Virginia Senate Republicans Obstruct Gun Violence Prevention Measures

State Sen. Adam Ebbin (D-VA)

The Virginia Senate’s Courts of Justice Committee defeated several proposals for gun violence prevention, on party-line votes at an unscheduled meeting on Friday. And while one bill initially passed the committee — a proposal to prevent unlicensed vendors who don’t run background checks from selling firearms at gun shows — the committee rescinded its initial 8-6 vote an hour later and delayed reconsideration until Monday after a Republican Senator changed his mind.

On eight-to-six votes, the committee’s Republican majority defeated proposals to require universal background checks, ban guns in Richmond’s Capitol Square, and to allow local governments to establish firearm ordinances for their own property. One Republican crossed the aisle to back a proposal to ban high-capacity magazines, but that measure too failed on a 7-7 tie.

A separate bill, which would allow only federally licensed vendors who perform background checks to sell guns at Virginia gun shows initially passed with two Republicans voting in support. When one of those Republicans became concerned about the language, a hastily called informal meeting of the committee was held at the chairman’s desk at which the bill was reconsidered and postponed until Monday.

Sen. Adam Ebbin (D), author of several of the defeated bills, told ThinkProgress, “It was really sad to see committee Republicans searching for any pretense to defeat bills that would require all gun buyers to go through the same commonsense background check that most buyers already go through. We don’t need to have loopholes the size of Texas. People who want to buy guns in VA and don’t want to go through the background check can easily work their and that’s deadly wrong.”

Ebbin, along with Del. Patrick Hope (D), recently recorded an undercover video at a gunshow and was told since he didn’t look like a felon or a bank-robber, as long as he had a Virginia driver’s license everything would be fine. He was able to purchase guns and high-capacity magazines without any background check.

Watch their video:

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GOP-Controlled Virginia House Committee Kills Voting Rights Restoration Proposals

Convicted felons in must petition to the governor for voting rights clemency

The Virginia House of Delegates subcommittee with jurisdiction over constitutional amendments killed a series of proposals Monday that would have restored the civil rights of persons convicted of a felony who have completed their sentences. This move come days after Gov. Bob McDonnell (R-VA) endorsed changing the Virginia constitution to automatically allow non-violent felons to regain their voting rights after serving their time.

Virginia is one of a handful of states that prohibits all citizens convicted of felonies from voting, even after they serve their terms, unless they are granted clemency by the governor. A series of proposals by Democrats and Republican members of the Virginia House of Delegates were rejected, en mass, by the Constitutional Amendments Subcommittee of the House Privileges and Elections Committee. The subcommittee’s four Republicans unanimously voted to kill all of the proposals, Democrats Algie Howell (D) and Johnny Joannou (D) were the only votes in favor of any of the measures.

Both McDonnell’s Secretary of the Commonwealth Janet Vestal Kelly and Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II (R) attended the hearing to speak in support automatic restorations. Had any of the bills passed through the Virginia General Assembly this year and again next year, it would have gone to a statewide referendum.

Deputy House Majority Leader C. Todd Gilbert (R), a former prosecutor who does not sit on the committee, told the Richmond Times-Dispatch that he opposed automatic restoration because felons already get off too easy. “These are not people we ask of much … All we ask them is to show a little personal responsibility and fill out a simple application [for rights restoration].” Far from just simple procedural act, applying for clemency is no guarantee that whoever is governor will grant the clemency request.

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Virginia Governor Quietly Certifies Restrictive Abortion Clinic Regulations

On the Friday between the Christmas and New Year’s holidays, Gov. Bob McDonnell (R-VA) quietly approved new, stringent regulations intended to target abortion clinics. Virginia’s Board of Health adopted the new anti-abortion rules in September, and the governor’s certification is the next step toward making the regulations permanent — and potentially forcing many of the state’s 20 abortion clinics to close their doors.

A spokesperson for McDonnell explained the governor advanced the anti-abortion rules because he believes “these common-sense regulations will help ensure that this medical procedure takes place in facilities that are modern, safe and well-regulated, in order to help ensure the safety and well-being of all patients.” But women’s health advocates designate this type of legislation as the “Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers” (TRAP) because — rather than doing anything to ensure women’s safety — they actually over-regulate abortion providers as an indirect method of restricting women’s reproductive rights. TRAP laws force many abortion clinics to close when they find themselves unable to comply with complicated, expensive standards.

Even though Virginia’s Board of Health is intended to operate as a nonpartisan medical body, the fight over enacting the new clinic regulations has become intensely political — a growing trend among state-level boards, which anti-abortion advocates are increasingly using to advance their anti-choice agendas.

When the Board considered the new rules before their final vote, protesters and women’s health advocates were barred from speaking during the hearing, and only a limited number of people were even permitted to enter the room. And it turned out State Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R) was essentially threatening Virginia’s Board — which ended up approving the TRAP laws by a 13-2 vote — by warning members they could be denied state-funded legal services if they voted to relax the clinic regulations. In October, Virginia health commissioner Dr. Karen Remley resigned from her position on the Board in protest of the regulations, citing her disapproval of the proposed TRAP laws as the primary reason she could no longer serve “in good faith.”

Now that McDonnell has approved the regulations, they will be sent back through the process of review by the Board of Health following a 60-day public comment period. According to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, the permanent regulations are expected to be adopted by this summer.

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Tech at Night: Live from Virginia: Human Trafficking, Cybersecurity

I’m back, having gotten myself and my worldly possessions from southern California to northern Virginia. I also have a backlog of items that I’m never going to cover completely tonight, so some issues are going to wait until Monday. So please, check back Monday. There are things I’d love to cover tonight, but I simply lack the time.

Let’s start with Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) joining up to press Google to do something about the advertising of human trafficking services. Some people are going to have a knee-jerk reaction to this, call it a for-the-children threat to censor. But it’s not. The “child pornography” card gets pulled for all sorts of power grabs, but this isn’t about pictures on the Internet, either of real or made-up people. This is about the actual kidnapping and enslaving of people, including children. That is legitimate cause for action.

And note that Blackburn is would be perfectly happy for Google to do something about it, setting an industry standard, and end the need for government action of any kind. That’s commendable. Because you know what? Industry can act to emulate legislation and do so more effectively than government ever will.

So, how about some cybersecurity?

If we’re going to pass a bill at all, and we probably should given the rise of criminal and anarchist attacks trying to take down all world governments, we need to pass the SECURE IT bills introduced by McCain and co. in the Senate, and by Blackburn and co. in the House. Heightened criminal penalties, lowered barriers to defensive information sharing, and no government power grab. What’s not to like?

Information, not regulation, is the most powerful too in the box for fighting online attacks. Honest people need to be informed of possible attacks by domestic businesses or by foreign entities. SECURE IT tries to help information sharing. That’s what we need.

What we don’t need is to bring DHS in to regulate private industry, which is what Joe Lieberman and Susan Collins want. John McCain, not the staunchest advocate of free markets after his recent Augusta National comments, even sees the glaring problems here when he’s saying “A super-regulator like DHS would impact free-market forces.”

Note an interesting problem here: industries we’re most worried about are already regulated. Utilities, banks, doctors, airports, and others already have government breathing down their necks. If we bring DHS into it, we’re multiplying obligations and creating redundancy. That’s harmful, not helpful. Security requires clarity of design and of purpose. Mistakes come with complexity, and successful attacks are born in mistakes.

Democrat Chris Dodd may want to revive PROTECT IP in the Senate, but as long as the House leadership won’t budge on SOPA, its House counterpart, that’s not happening.

It may be time to Play the Sad Trombone for LightSquared. Losing Sprint had to hurt. A lot.

Tune in Monday for Internet Sales Tax failures, ACU vs Jim DeMint(!), and more that I didn’t cover tonight because I had to go to the grocery store, as I had no food in my new home and wanted to go pick some up before 2am.

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