Legislative Updates
HEALNC has a legislative team that interacts with North Carolina legislators on behalf of HEALNC and its members. We will keep our members posted here about the latest bills.
September 2023
September 2023
CALL TO ACTION for two bills included…
Adding Protection from Mask Mandates to H98 Medical Freedom Act – ACT NOW
With talk of mask mandates and the threat of vaccine mandates in the near future, there is hope of seeing improvements in HB98, The Medical Freedom Act. For example, the bill originally covered both masks and vaccines. However, our strong health freedom legislators had to negotiate out masks in order to garner the votes from moderate health freedom legislators needed to get it through.
Those moderate legislators now seem to understand the importance of including masks in the bill. But they need to hear your kind but urgent voices.
We are working with our friendly legislators to find a procedural method of making amendments at this stage in the legislative process where amendments are difficult but totally doable. When a way is found, we will ask for additional amendments. As currently written, the bill only protects public school/university students and government workers such as police, firemen, etc. We hope to add in masks, other vaccines, and coverage for private businesses and non-profits.
If you haven’t already participated in our campaign for mask choice, click the button to do so.
Once a procedure is found to amend for mask choice, we will campaign to expand the bill to other vaccines and coverage for private businesses and non-profit employees.
H586/S644 Yulia's Law (No CV19 Discrimination/Organ Transplantation)
Yulia’s Law, H586/S644 which prevents discrimination against organ transplant patients who are unvaccinated seems to be stuck in the Senate Rules committee. If you haven’t already participated in our campaign to move it through the Rules committee, click the button to do so.
Yulia Hicks, an adopted Ukrainian girl living in NC was denied a life-saving kidney transplant by Duke hospital nearly a year ago due to her parents' decision to decline the COVID shot despite natural immunity from previous infection.
Yulia's parents, Lee and Chrissy, were in the national news. Fortunately, Yulia received her kidney transplant from ECU in May and is doing phenomenally well!
In April, a bill was introduced in the House preventing discrimination based on COVID vaccine status for transplant patients. It easily passed with a bi-partisan super majority vote in early May- Yulia's Law-H586. Since then, it's been sitting in the NC Senate’s Rules Committee. After inquiring with our friendly Senators, it seems that the Rules committee is unlikely to move the bill forward this session. We speculate that this might be due in part to the Committee leader's connections and preference for big medicine/hospitals.
Let's let the Rules Leaders and Committee members know that this bill MUST be voted on in the Senate THIS session. If you haven’t already, please participate in this campaign to request NC citizens be protected from such life-threatening rules in many NC hospitals.
Thank You Luncheon for Friendly Legislators
As the session winds down, HEALNC in partnership with NCPFF, will be hosting a thank you luncheon to thank our friendly legislators!
School Based Health Centers
One of our next initiatives is to educate the legislature on School Based Health Centers (SBHC). SBHCs sound like a great idea. However, we are concerned that in these centers, children will be able to make health decisions without their parent's knowledge for such things as vaccines, contraception, and mental health such as gender affirming counseling.
Stay tuned. You will be learning more about SBHCs soon.
FRIDAY 8/19/23
FRIDAY 8/19/23
We are thrilled to announce that the veto of the Parents' Bill of Rights was overturned. It is now law. The medical freedom act is still held up in the budget process.
As there was not much to report, we will use this update to introduce a new tool to help you track your legislator’s voting record on medical freedom! HEALNC in conjunction with Stand For Health Freedom is pleased to announce the Health Freedom Scorecard.
When you open the scorecard, you’ll see the Summary tab is open. Notice other tabs are Legislation, Bill Score, Vote Index, and Maps.
Summary Tab
Notice that the House members are listed first, followed by the Senators. The “Possible” column is the number of points available. However, legislators who sponsor or co-sponsor a bill get bonus points so their score can be higher than the “Possible” column.
The “Vote Index” is the percentage of times that the legislator voted pro health freedom this year. If your legislator is a Democrat and has anything higher than 0%, they have voted at least 1 time for health freedom and/or co-sponsored a bill.
You can click on the legislator’s name to see specifically how he voted and whether he sponsored any health freedom bills.
Legislation Tab
This tab shows the bills used to create the Health Freedom scorecard. Bills that start with an H are House bills and bills that start with an S are Senate bills.
- Votes: Number of votes on that bill. Notice that none of the Senate bills have votes. That’s because all three of these bills have passed in the House but have not YET not the Senate.
- Vote Rating: The bills are weighted. All of the bills have a weight of 2 except H621 which has a weight of 1.
- Sponsor Rating: Bill sponsors get 2 bonus points for sponsoring the bill.
- Cosponsor Rating: Cosponsors get 1 bonus point for sponsoring the bill.
- Comments: Notice the note for H621 that explains why its rating is only 1: “This bill started as a strong bill that covered the childhood vaccines. However, an amendment that allows the medical societies to override the legislation stripped it of its power. Thus it has a rating of only 1.”
This tab allows you to see your legislator’s total score as well as his/her score for each separate bill. You’ll see that senators may have a positive score for a bill that has never been voted on. This means that the senator was a sponsor or co-sponsor.
Any Democrat who has a positive score or a zero has shown some courage to cross party lines to vote and/or sponsor bodily autonomy bills.
Vote Index
This bar chart shows each legislator’s favorable votes as a percentage of possible votes.
Maps
When opening this tab, you will choose House or Senate. This map shows a color-coded version of how legislators in your region of the state voted.
We hope you will find the Health Freedom Scorecard helpful as you interact with your legislators.
MONDAY 7/17/23
MONDAY 7/17/23
We have news on two of the four health freedom bills since our last report.
Parents’ Bill of Rights – Governor Cooper has vetoed the Parents’ Bill of Rights. We need help from those of you who live in Burke County. A veto is not bad news, given that the Republicans have a veto-proof majority. Thus, they can overturn the veto.
However, Representative Hugh Blackwell of Burke County was the sole Republican who voted against the bill before it was sent to the governor. This was a surprise to us as Rep. Blackwell has been a GOOD FRIEND to health freedom and other related issues.
We have spoken with his office, and he voted against the bill in protest – he wanted it to be stronger.
If you live in Burke County, you are a constituent. Please call or email his office and thank him for trying to make the Parents’ Bill of Rights stronger, and ask him to please vote "yes" on the veto override. (Remember to be polite as always with our legislators. He is a good friend to the movement and probably was standing up for us with a protest vote, so thank him for his support of health freedom.)
Rep. Blackwell’s phone number is 919-733-5805 and his email is Hugh.Blackwell@ncleg.gov.
*Please email us at info@healnc.net after you call/email so we’ll have an idea of how many people contacted him.
Medical Freedom Act – HEALNC is collaborating with NCPFF (NC Physicians for Freedom) to help get the Medical Freedom Act passed. A representative from HEALNC and one from NCPFF will be meeting with the House and Senate primary sponsors in the upcoming week to talk about strategies we can use to help improve the bill and get it passed in the Senate. (It’s already passed the House.)
We may be asking you to help educate the senators depending on the strategy we develop with the bill sponsors and if the bill doesn’t pass via the budget. (For more information about the possibility of the bill passing via the budget, please see the 6/30/23 legislative update.)
FRIDAY 6/30/23
FRIDAY 6/30/23
Story-at-a-Glance
- Four of eleven health freedom bills have crossed the hurdle called Crossover and have the ability to become law this year. One of the bills, the Parents’ Bill of Rights, has passed in both chambers and is ready to go to the governor who will likely veto it. If so, hopefully the veto-proof majority will be able to overcome the veto.
- On April 5, Democrat Tricia Cotham, a liberal Democrat from the Charlotte area switched parties giving NC Republicans a veto-proof supermajority.
- HEALNC is getting invaluable advice on legislative strategy from Stand for Health Freedom and a legislative aide at the legislature.
- Thank you to those who completed our survey about injuries you and your family experienced from the Covid measures. We are assembling them so we can share them with the legislature.
While HEALNC is a non-partisan organization, currently the Republican party is more health freedom friendly. There are some Democrats who support health freedom, too. Our biggest obstacle is DHHS and the medical societies that rush in to water down or stop bills that temper the power of big pharma.
In this report we will discuss 3 issues:
- Four health freedom-related bills have crossed an important hurdle on the way to becoming law
- NC now has a veto-proof supermajority that is more health freedom-friendly
- HEALNC has a strategy to help turn these bills (and future bills) into law.
Four bills crossed an important hurdle.
- H98 – Medical Freedom Act – prevents government institutions (including schools and excluding hospitals) from mandating the Covid Vaccine. It’s not perfect, but we’re thrilled that it does protect our public school/university kids and government workers from mandates. When its sponsor, Rep. Brian Biggs, had to cut important aspects of the bill, he told us that he’d rather help some people than none. We agree.
- The Medical Freedom Act has made it into the budget and may be passed in conjunction with the budget. Although approval through the budget would be the quickest road with the most certainty, we are hoping that it still has to be ratified in the conventional way: passing the house and senate. That way, we can ask for amendments to cover businesses and other vaccines, and we have a chance to better educate the senate.
- S49 – Parents’ Bill of Rights (see the 4/1/23 update below for more details) This bill made it through crossover via the senate and has already passed in the house. It is on its way to the governor’s desk. It’s predicted that the governor will veto it. If so, it will come back to the legislature. Hopefully, we will be able to overturn the veto with the Republican’s veto proof majority.
- H568 – No CV19 Discrimination/Organ Transplantation: This bill passed the House easily with affirmative votes from 19 Democrats! We are optimistic it will pass the Senate easily, too.
- H621 – 3-Year FDA Approval for New Childhood Vaxx: This bill requires any new childhood vaccine approved by the FDA to wait 3 years before being added to the NC schedule. HEALNC recommended an amendment that also required a vaccine to have 3 years of inert placebo testing before being added to the NC schedule. The sponsor seriously considered this amendment. However, pressure from DHHS resulted in the bill being gutted. We were disappointed, but with hindsight, we are thrilled that Representative Blackwell, a tenured legislator, was willing to touch the third rail, the childhood vaccines!
Yes, these bills are not perfect. However, they started off much stronger with sponsors who understand the issues, and formerly taboo topics were discussed and eyes were opened. Future bills will be easier to pass because these bills and their courageous sponsors paved the way. In addition, we now have health freedom votes on record which help us know who we can count on in future votes.
Health Freedom-Friendly Supermajority
On April 5, Tricia Cotham, a liberal Democrat from the Charlotte area switched parties. She stated, "I’ve suffered many attacks since I’ve been up here, from Democrats in the party, from blasting me on Twitter, to calling me names, to going after my family, going after my children." She is now a reliable health freedom vote and her constituents seem to support her switch to Republican.
Representative Cotham’s move to the Republican party gives them a veto-proof supermajority in both chambers so Governor Cooper will not be able to veto bills that get a supermajority vote.
HEALNC’s Strategy for Making Health Freedom Law
HEALNC is privileged to be getting strategic advice from Stand for Health Freedom and a legislative aide at the legislature. Their support allows us to operate at a more sophisticated level without the prohibitive cost of hiring a lobbyist.
We’ve learned that our strategy must treat legislators as we would anyone else in our lives who we hope to influence – with courtesy and respect. We’ve also learned that there are common mistakes that grassroots groups sometimes make. (This was a general statement about grassroots lobbying, not specific to health freedom groups.) For example, grassroots groups may call and email legislators with angry letters when a significant number of legislators are already friendly and working in their favor. We don’t want the people who are helping us to be distracted or annoyed. We want to support them.
This is why we are not asking you to protest, swarm the legislature or make calls or emails at this time. (We’ll pull out those tactics, if needed.) Yet, it is important for the legislators to know that you are there. Therefore, we asked those of you who were harmed by the Covid measures to complete a survey about your experience. Thank you! We are compiling over seventy stories to share with the legislators. (If you completed the survey, you should have received an email in the past two weeks asking a few more questions such as whether you would like us to include your full name. Please respond to make sure your story is represented. If you didn’t receive the email, email us at info@healnc.net.
As the 2023 session unfolds we’ll see what other campaigns are needed and let you know how you can help.
SATURDAY 4/1/23
We have four positive bills in the North Carolina General Assembly. Here are the details about the bills:
1. The Medical Freedom Act (House Bill 98, Senate Bill 121)
- This bill is far from perfect as it only protects employees of government entities from COVID vaccine mandates. Businesses are not included. It does, however, protect children in state schools and universities from the same mandates.
2. Parents’ Bill of Rights (Senate Bill 49, House version is in the works)
- This bill is excellent in many ways. Perhaps the most forward looking part is that the bill gives parents control over surveillance of our children by requiring a parent’s prior written permission before a child’s biometric identification (anything from finger printing to DNA) can be collected and stored.
- The media has labeled this bill the “Can’t say gay” bill, which is simply untrue. The senate bill simply says that sexuality and gender issues cannot be taught as part of the curriculum until the fifth grade. House sponsors of this bill plan to increase this to a higher grade level. If children ask a question about sexuality, the teachers are permitted to answer. The bill does not mention the words homosexuality or gay yet the media has created division around a bill that would otherwise be non-partisan.
- We have requested that the sponsor of the House version of the bill add a notification of the right to a religious or medical exemption along with vaccine requirements and require that a parent be present for all medical services except in the case of emergencies.
3. No CV19 Vaccine Mandates for NC Students (House Bill 222)
- If this bill passes, students will not be made to take the CV19 vaccine to attend school in NC, in spite of the fact that the CDC has added it to the childhood immunization schedule.
4. Health Care Freedom Act (Senate Bill 375)
- This bill prevents medical practitioners from refusing to care for patients who have not received ANY vaccine. (Given how much money in insurance incentives pediatricians get for having fully vaccinated patients, it will be interesting to see if they come out against it. We'll keep you posted if this happens.)
- A bill stating that NC is a sovereign state which does not answer to the CDC and WHO
- An all encompassing bill similar to Florida’s SB 222
Some of the highlights of this bill are:
- The bill prevents vaccine mandates by private businesses and schools as well as government entities.
- It makes the unvaccinated a protected class.
- It prevents citizens from being required to participate in a vaccine registry.
- Employers cannot discriminate against unvaccinated employees.
