A view of the Indiana Statehouse on Feb. 1, 2022. (Leslie Bonilla Muñiz/Indiana Capital Chronicle)
I vividly remember the first time I heard the expression, “this bill is a solution in search of a problem.” I was a young legislative liaison for a state agency, and we were supporting legislation that the industry we regulated believed was unnecessary. Their spokesperson used the line in his committee testimony against the bill.
“That was a good one,” I thought with an envious smile regarding the quip. But after the hearing, the agency went to work documenting the alleged and elusive “problem.” Then we had a meeting with the industry to discuss solutions that would eliminate the need for the legislation. Problem solved.
That was thirty years ago. Politics and legislative strategy have both changed since then.
The 2025 legislative session in Indiana begins this week. After the holidays have passed and the ceremonial and celebratory dust has settled from the most recent election, the big ideas start landing on paper and become introduced as bills. There are always some doozies. Many of them comically looking for the problem to justify their own hilarious solutions.
Senate Bill 166, from Sen. Spencer Deery, provides that “a person may not advertise a product containing marijuana or a marijuana business by any medium within the borders of Indiana.” Any medium? Hmm. Good luck regulating the internet. “The borders of Indiana?” Hmm. I usually refer to those as the state lines, which makes me think this bill might be the first step to Indiana’s secession from the union. Over pot!
Senate Bill 12, from Sen. James Tomes, is even funnier. First, it defines the term “squatter,” a word that will never cease to make me giggle given the litany of its applicability. But in this bill, it defines the term as someone who is trespassing and occupying property without authorization and creates an expedited removal process. Hmm. Trespassing is already a crime, but when we call it squatting, it’s really bad. In this bill, law enforcement must remove a squatter within 48 hours. Trespassers apparently will continue to have more time.
But these early bills aren’t all funny. Far from it.
Another transgender ban
House Bill 1041, filed by Rep. Michelle Davis, extends the original bad idea from her legislation in 2022 that regulates the gender of participants in school athletics. That solution in search of a problem from three years ago is being extended to include college sports this year. And why not? Indiana is the home of the NCAA after all.
What this year’s HB 1041 does — yes both bad bills cutely have the same number — is to effectively require the NCAA to ban transgender women from women’s sports. It requires sixty-days-notice be given if a transgender woman from another state plans to compete in Indiana. The apparent reason for the extreme amount of notice is to allow for the statutorily created grievance procedure to be fully pursued by the aggrieved.
So, in case anyone out there was unclear about the Hoosier state’s hostility toward transgender women after 2022, this new law is attempting to force the NCAA to implement those hostilities across the country. And for what?
NCAA President Charlie Baker testified before the U.S. Senate’s Judiciary Committee last month that of the 510,000 athletes at NCAA schools, fewer than ten are transgender, as reported by Brooke Migdon of The Hill. Fewer than ten!
“Twenty-five states since 2020 have passed laws prohibiting transgender children and teens from competing on school sports teams that match their gender identity, according to the Movement Advancement Project, which tracks LGBTQ laws. The majority of bans also affect participation in college sports,” Migdon wrote.
The difference in those bad laws and this bad bill is that the NCAA is based in Indiana.
That enables this louder message: Indiana is the most hostile of them all. This is the predictable progression of hate-based legislation in the era of supermajorities. There is no reason to believe that if this bill passes it will be the end of the road for the sentiment.
It will likely never be enough for Davis and her supporters. Will it end with sports? What about the workplace? What about other public and private benefits? The so-called aggrieved in arenas like this one tend to stay aggrieved. Their anger is what is politically valuable, and it requires regular feeding. This won’t be the end of the assault on the transgender community’s equal access to the Indiana and the America everyone else has.
A relative of the original quip I heard thirty years ago, is that there are politicians who are great at finding problems for every solution too. In today’s political climate, where grievance is the currency, these politicians are more successful than ever before.
But the body of work from an era like this will not be funny at all.
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