In the final 48 minutes of the regular legislative session, delegates hotly debated a proposal to place a hold on removing students from public schools to homeschool environments if there is a pending child abuse or neglect investigation.
At the end, time ran out on “Raylee’s Law.”
The bill is named for 8-year-old Raylee Browning, who died of abuse and neglect in 2018 after she was withdrawn from school, eliminating contact with educators under mandatory reporting requirements. That bill has been introduced since 2019, but has never passed.
The effort reached a crescendo again this year when members of the state Senate, on Friday, moved to amend “Raylee’s Law” into a separate bill, HB 5537, repealing obsolete and outdated sections of the Education code.
That sent “Raylee’s Law” to the House of Delegates on the final day of the session. Although Delegates started their day at 9 a.m., the bill was not presented to legislators until 11:12 p.m. The session ends at midnight on Day 60.
The bill finally came up following a break in floor activity. During that break, senators who support “Raylee’s Law” — Republicans Amy Nichole Grady and Ryan Weld — crossed the House floor to speak with deputy speakers Matthew Rohrbach and Joe Ellington.
“Senator Weld and I had to go over to talk to House leadership to get that actually put on the floor. I’m happy they decided to take a vote on that,” Grady said.
“As I was watching it, there was a lot of filibustering going on, trying to run that clock out. I can’t for the life of me fathom or even start to understand how anyone confuses this bill with taking away somebody’s freedom. The only thing it does is try to stop child abusers.”
Once the debate began in the House, delegates who wanted the bill to pass were increasingly desperate to take final action.
Others who were more skeptical of the bill offered several amendments that were taking time to debate. If any of the amendments were to pass, that would require the changed bill to return to the Senate for review, certainly running out of time.
Delegate Elliott Pritt, R-Fayette, begged his colleagues to pass the bill without changes.
“We have an opportunity here tonight to do something to protect children. We have tried this for four years. If we amend this bill, change it in any way, this bill dies tonight, which I do think is probably the outcome that some in this room want,” Pritt said.
He went on to say, “I am pleading with you. I am pleading with you to please reject these amendments as quickly as we can so we can send this bill back to the Senate.”
Other delegates said the bill would curtail the decision-making ability of homeschool families. They said their amendments were important to refine the legislation.
“If we really want to protect kids, maybe we should write good law, because the law before you is not going to protect one single child,” said Delegate Adam Burkhammer, R-Lewis.
“And I don’t care what time it is, our job is to write good law. And we need to write good law, and we need to protect kids. And this garbage of kicking this same bill around for the last four years — it didn’t pass because it’s bad law.”
Delegate Shawn Fluharty, D-Ohio, has introduced the “Raylee’s Law” for the past four years. As it became more clear that the legislation would run out of time again, he became upset as he spoke on the floor.
From the time the House received the legislation from the Senate on Saturday, he said, “We sat on it for eight hours.”
“This is a poor behavior,” he said, “disgusting government.”
At 11:57 p.m., too late for the bill to still be viable, Delegates voted 94-1 in favor of the passage of an amended version of “Raylee’s Law.”
Then the clock struck midnight on another year.
