Showers and a possible thunderstorm during the evening will give way to cloudy skies after midnight. Low near 65F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 70%..
Tonight
Showers and a possible thunderstorm during the evening will give way to cloudy skies after midnight. Low near 65F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 70%.
The hypocrisy from the GOP supermajority that controls the West Virginia Legislature concerning what is or isn’t government overreach is aggravating and, in all honesty, getting a bit old.
The supposed party of small government, Republicans in the Legislature have made it clear that the oft-touted concept of local control applies only when state lawmakers agree with those local policies.
For instance, on Monday, state senators passed Senate Bill 579, which would overturn anti-discrimination policies passed by 20 West Virginia cities that extend civil rights protection to LGBTQ individuals and veterans, among others. Those groups are not specifically protected under the state statute, the Human Rights Act of West Virginia. State Code prohibits discrimination for things like housing and employment based on “race, religion, color, national origin, ancestry, sex, age, blindness, or disability.â€
With pushes at the state level to change the law to include sexual orientation and gender identity going nowhere for years, municipalities began to adopt their own ordinances to extend civil rights protections within their own boundaries.
West Virginia Republicans have been trying to undermine or undo those local ordinances since taking control of the Legislature in 2015. That’s 10 years of beating the culture war drum for the state to supersede local control on an issue because Republicans in the Legislature don’t like what cities have decided to do with their local power.
The typical argument used to try and strip cities of their power (while pretending it’s not about allowing discrimination against certain people) is that municipal laws including such protections are out of alignment with state law. However, if an individual is charged with a criminal act against a gay victim, it’s a state charge. The suspect is unlikely to face an additional charge of a hate crime based on a city ordinance. In fact, when such charges have been applied in the past, the state Supreme Court has consistently dismissed them, ruling that “sex,†as it is laid out in the Human Rights Act of West Virginia, refers strictly to gender, not sexual orientation or gender identity.
In other words, it’s a bad-faith argument.
Recall that the Legislature also tried to usurp local control in the 2022 session with a bill that would’ve overridden the authority of county school boards to mandate students wear masks to protect public health. This was on the heels of the COVID-19 pandemic, when the GOP culture war du jour was politicizing protective health measures in the cynical name of freedom. Indeed, a month or so prior, then-Gov. Jim Justice convened a special session of the Legislature, which passed a bill to provide exemptions for employer-enacted policies requiring vaccines or frequent COVID testing at the height of the pandemic, essentially taking control not just out of the hands of municipalities, but business owners, as well.
As continues to be the case, the West Virginia Republican Party is only for local control when it suits its agenda. Big government becomes awfully appealing to the GOP when anyone has different ideas of how their cities, schools or businesses should operate.
