##VIDEO ID:https://iga.in.gov/video/124/2025/committees/senate/standing/committee_judiciary_4200/media/1a163882-69fe-4cbb-a34b-50411468ff68/Judiciary_1_22_2025.mp4/Judiciary_1_22_2025.m3u8## All right. This is the Judiciary Committee. It's called Order. I think I see some of my members in the hallway. Would love for them to join us. And we're going to start right out of the gate with Senate Bill 157. I see the author here, Senator Gaskell. And so while he's coming up to the podium, we're going to start with the 2 amendments. And I'll start with the order in which I received them, the request so to speak. The First Amendment is number 1 and that is this is a complicated area, this property rights bill. And so we are now specifically requiring the law enforcement to intervene. So in what can be maybe and hopefully not a difficult issue, but could be a difficult issue. So we're going to give them immunity, because they're kind of in my opinion, a gray space between implementing criminal versus civil. So that's the First Amendment, number 1. Do we have any committee discussion on that? We have a motion then. Can we take that by consent? Consent. All right. Thank you. The second amendment, number 2, has to do with So again, these are people who do not have any, and we'll get into the context of the bill. But I wanted to make sure those who are testifying on the bill are testifying on the bill as amended because it does make some significant changes in my opinion, like the immunity for law enforcement. So this this applies to, let's say, for example, some person a, Sally's on the lease, someone else, friend, boyfriend is there is an invitee to her but not on the lease. But Sally is a leaseholder. This is not the issue that we're concerned about with respect to the invitee. So the amendment will read that a law enforcement officer dispatched to remove a squatter shall remove the squatter from the property unless the law enforcement discovers credible evidence that the individual is an invitee of the property owner, that would be the landlord, or a person that has or formally had a rental agreement. That's the person I named Sally. So that's also not what we're talking about. We consider them in the landlord tenant side of the issue. This is the non landlord tenant issue. So does anyone have any discussion on that amendment? Can I have a motion then, please? Can we take that by consent? Thank you. Okay. So now we have an amended bill. Senator Gaskell, now the floor is yours. Thank you, Madam Chair. Appreciate the opportunity to bring Senate Bill 157 before you. Model is off of legislation that passed in Florida where they had a significant squatter problem. I don't know in your areas of the state if you have seen this type of problem, but definitely in my home county I've seen it quite a bit. And the bill basically allows a landowner the ability to sign an affidavit, provide it to law enforcement and get the person removed from the property as long as the person is not a tenant, is not a basically the landlord agrees or the property owner signs an affidavit that the person has not a tenant, has never been a tenant and has no legal purpose to be there. So that takes law enforcement off of the hook because they are relying on the affidavit. So happy to answer any questions, go into more detail if anyone would like me to. Appreciate your support. So I'm going to ask the committee if you would wait and ask Senator Gaskell questions at the end, because we have a lot of people signed up to testify on our bills today. And so this is the light one. And so we have 5 people signed up to testify. If you still have questions, they haven't answered them, please feel free. So I'm going to call we have Kylene Lindgren, then Christopher Lee and then Katherine Williams. Chair Brown, for the record, my name is Colleen Lindgren, and I'm legal policy manager at Pacific Legal Foundation. PLF is a nonprofit public interest law firm with 18 US Supreme Court wins on behalf of Americans' constitutional rights. Half of those are in the property rights space. And we have, worked on, this this issue, around the country both through litigation and through policy reform. And, we're dedicated to defending and, promoting property rights, equality and opportunity for all, and constitutional separation powers. And we have been doing this since 1973. We have litigated over 2,400 constitutional cases. And, we're I'm grateful for time here to briefly address our support for, SB 157. This bill addresses an increasing threat, as senator Gaskill mentioned, to property rights known as squatting. Squatting occurs when an individual or multiple people occupy someone else's property without any legal claim to the property and without consent or permission from the property owner or renter or somebody else who has permission to be there. So in other words, it's trespassing. But unlike addressing trespassing, what we've learned in the last few years is that removing squatters is incredibly difficult in most states. Although trespassing itself is a criminal offense, most state governments treat squatter removal as a landlord tenant eviction, so therefore a civil dispute. But squatters are not tenants. Therefore, landlord tenant laws can't appropriately address this problem. Increasingly due to either poorly written laws that allow for loopholes or misinterpretation of laws by courts, law enforcement officers are often forced to forego action and tell property owners to just file an eviction case. So therefore, the the state agents that we're charging with protecting property owners are unable to do so. So this bill makes great stor great strides towards solution for owners, for law enforcement, and also for individuals who might be wrongly accused. And I think that's an important part of this. This encompasses all the parties involved. Real squatters don't care about the law, but they do care about consequences. So I'm currently working on a bill in Kentucky, House Bill 142, that imposes criminal penalties for illegally occupying property in line with other strict state laws that address issues like trespassing and burglary. I'd encourage, this committee to consider that as well. At least 10 states are also considering a very similar reforms, similar bills. And several states including Florida, which Senator Gaskell mentioned, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Missouri have already implemented reforms. And New York's governor has already addressed some of these issues through executive order, and they're also considering a bill to to go even further this session. Finally, in 2021, the US Supreme Court decided a PLF case out of California that affirmed the right to exclude trespassers from private property. So based on this decision, we believe that state laws that allow squatters to illegally occupy property can amount to an unconstitutional taking of private property under the 5th Amendment. So where state laws, even if merely ambiguous, can be relied upon by squatters, not prop but not property owners, this amounts to government approved physical occupations which equal takings. So we encourage, the so your support for this bill, also with, you know, potential for litigation, and keeping the state out of that in the future in mind. Thank you for your time. Happy to answer any questions at any point. Thank you very much, Colleen. Any questions? Alright. Seeing none. Next I said Christopher Lee. And then we had Kathy Williams and then after Kathy is Jenny Terry. Thank you, madam chair, members of the committee. My name is Christopher Lee and I'm here on behalf of the Indiana Apartment Association in support of Bill 157. We appreciate senator Gaskell's work on it. For the apartment industry, squatting hasn't, been as much of an issue here in Indiana, thankfully. But I attended a conference, with our counterpart associations across the country, last year in the summer and learned that in other states, this has become the top issue for apartment associations, specifically Texas. And there were some others there that are looking to address this, this issue this session. For that reason and not wanting Indiana to get to that point that Texas and and other states have found themselves in, we support this bill. Right now, the the process for us when we do have squatters, like I said, it's rare, but it does happen. We've heard from our board members that it happens here in Indiana. The process is confusing, for law enforcement and for, the property owner. We think that this bill makes the process more clear and we appreciate that. I'm happy to answer any questions. Thank you very much. Mr. Lee, any questions? Senator Till? Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. You indicated that this process is difficult now. Can you please explain to me how it's difficult? Yeah. Senator, thanks for the question. I think the issue from what I've learned talking with property owners and talking with law enforcement, the issue comes in when people claim that they do have a legal right to be on a property. Right? And and, the property owner says, no, you don't. And law enforcement, a lot of times, doesn't wanna get involved in that situation. And it also, I think, becomes more complicated to say that somebody is in Florida at their home in Florida, and they've had a squatter on their property for a month or 2. And, as they're later longer, I think they make more of a claim to law enforcement that they have a right to be there. And it's just confusing. And in some cases too, in Indiana, I believe our property owners end up going through the eviction process to remove squatters, when the trespass law does not work and and, going through a long eviction process just to remove somebody that should have never been there, that we never had a con contractual agreement to begin with. I don't think that that's a reasonable process for us to have to go through in this situation of squatting. The reason why I asked you the question is because I'm actually a property owner. I own apartments. Never had enough. I had a guy who was trespassing because I told him not to be there, and all I had to do is fill out a, form that allows IMPD to actually trespass people on my property. So there's already something in Marion County in place. So my question still I don't think you brought up a Florida issue. Unfortunately, we don't make laws for Florida. But, I'm still trying to understand. So you're saying someone could show up, stay on a property, produce no documentation for the law enforcement officer, and the law enforcement officer will still allow them to stay there. Senator, I believe when I mentioned Florida, I meant people, like and this doesn't apply to apartments, but people that have vacation homes in Florida. Right? Or Florida Right. For the multiple ones. Right. The properties here that I'm referring to, so if they have a squatter back in Indiana while they're spending the winter in Florida and Oh, sorry. Somebody in the property here. I apologize. Right. Well, you still haven't answered my question. What situation has been created? And again, I go back to the scenario I just gave to you. What are we doing here that's not already in place? If someone shows up and is living in an apartment that I own, they can't produce a key, they can't produce a lease, you're telling me law enforcement has determined that they will not remove the person? Senator, I think that varies by jurisdiction. I know you're in Marion County, and they may handle things one way. Different parts of the state might handle things a different way. We want uniformity in how we remove people that shouldn't be on the property to begin with. And I think that's all this bill does. Okay. So you want proceedings to be similar in Marion County as it is, for example, in Grant County. Right? I think any industry would want consistency across the state. Well, I would agree with you. But my only problem is that you come to us with an issue. We're here to hopefully address the issue. But I haven't heard you address whether or not again, this real simple question. You're telling me that law enforcement cannot remove someone if they're squatting right now in Indiana? If they produce no documentation, nothing else? In many parts of the state, yes, we have to go through the eviction process to have a squatter removed. Alright. Thank you. Senator Pol. Thank you, madam chair. So you had brought up law enforcement. Now do you believe that law enforcement supports, this bill and this initiative? I I don't wanna speak for law enforcement, senator. They testified on a bill this morning. I don't know if they're scheduled to testify here today, but I'm not gonna speak for them on this bill. How did they testify this morning? That that was a different squatter bill with very different language, and they brought up some points. I I can't remember if they were in support or against or neutral. But the the imposition of this would be on essentially, the the duty would be on the on law enforcement to to enforce this. Correct? Right. So, you know, how would it work in a situation in which you had a police force that said, you know what? This is still, you know, very confusing for us, and we don't want to have to just start kicking people out because now we're still kind of splitting hairs as to what's a valid lease, what isn't a valid lease, what, we're having to be judge, jury and executioner right here and right now as to whether or not these people get to stay on this property. From your perspective, I mean, you're the one that's come here to you know, be in favor of this bill. Are you telling me you just don't know how law enforcement feels about it? Senator, I I believe that first of all, I think the the amendment won today, I believe, should alleviate most of the concerns that you're talking about. And and, no, I I'm not gonna speak for a different association or or law enforcement. Well, the amendment 1 was pertaining to liability for it. Correct? Like, liability for yes. Right. But, I mean, still, at the end of the day, law enforcement, it's not just about law enforce or immunity for law enforcement. I mean, obviously, law enforcement are going to have to they're going to have to train differently. They're going to have to really enact essentially what this is on behalf of the property owners that don't want to either file an eviction or produce, you know, sufficient records to demonstrate this. I mean, that's to me what you're telling me. Right? That the the the issue is the trespass law doesn't work. Is that what you're saying? In this situation In some parts. It's insufficient. Yeah. Okay. But again, I mean, you understand that there's a difference between concerns with immunity, you know, for, you know, for liability for whatever actions someone may bring on behalf, of a squatter versus the burden of essentially having to train, having to enact, having to handle what could potentially now be what was in the civil run before now creating as a, you know, essentially a criminal act for law enforcement officers. Because essentially, if you if you disobey or if you, you know, if the squatter says, yeah, I'm still gonna refuse, then you're going to jail. Right? I is there a criminal penalty? Yeah. Okay. I mean, that's what I'm that's Yeah. I mean, obviously, our focus from the property owner's perspective is just to have the person not on our property anymore. Correct. Right? That that is our focus. Correct. And maybe that's why I especially why I don't wanna speak for law enforcement because our our focus, even though the law enforcement will be removing the person, in the situation if appropriate, how they go about that. And and law enforcement training, I think, is clearly outside of my expertise. Right? So they would have to speak to the additional training that they would have to do. Okay. That's fair. That's fair. But I mean, ultimately I mean, you would agree though. If, you know, a squatter says I'm not leaving, they're going to jail. Right. I I would say that if they're a squatter and they're on a property that's not theirs, they probably should go to jail. Okay. Right. One question. Thank you, Madam Chair, for allowing me to ask one more question. Does this bill provide immunity for law enforcement officers if they're wrong and they remove somebody who has a right to be there? Senator, I just saw the amendment before I came up here and I didn't really have time to digest it. So Well, you're supporting the bill. So respectfully, respectfully, you should know whether or not that there was Well, respectfully, I will say he was supporting the bill and was signed up before the amendment was issued. So Well, did okay. Then madam chairwoman, sorry. I asked the wrong person a question. Did we just did we did we just add immunity for law enforcement officers if they're wrong? We added immunity for law enforcement if they follow this law. Yes. But if they're wrong and they remove somebody who has a right to be there? I don't know what means what was wrong, so I'm not gonna answer that question. That's a hypothetical. And you had one question, and we do have other witnesses, and we have a lot of testimony today. So I'm not gonna answer any hypotheticals. But Maybe Senator Gaskell won maybe since it's Senator Gaskell's bill at the end, I'll answer that for you. Okay. So thank you very much. Thank you. So we Elizabeth Berg. Thank you, Chair Brown, members of the committee. I'm here today in a volunteer capacity. For the first 14 years after law school, I worked at the legal services organization where I litigate a large number of civil cases, including landlord tenant. For the past 29 years, actually, I've been here at the general assembly lobbying, so quite a while. We understand and appreciate the need to adjust squatters. I wanted to note one thing. The first witness talked a lot about trespass, and I understand that you, senator Clark, have a bill to fix the trespass law that could adjust some of these issues with helping law enforcement remove some of the squatters under the trespass law. So I'd like you to keep maybe that in consideration. Our concern with this bill is not the goal. The goal is to remove people from property that shouldn't be there. We are concerned with 2 parts of it. 1 is the impact that this could have on law enforcement and senator Clark in a better position to justice than I am. And I believe Mike Biebersong is gonna testify for the sheriffs and he can talk about this as well. But in some areas, they are overextended. They have other things that they need to be doing with their time and this could be a very time consuming thing for law enforcement. So to give you a little bit of context, when I first started practicing here in Indiana, it was not illegal for a landlord to evict somebody without going to court. So in 1999, a coalition of senators from both sides of the aisle came together to put together a law saying that you have to evict somebody through the court process instead of using self help. So as part of that discussion, what we did is say, okay. The landlords raised the issue. Why do we have a tenant who's tearing up the property? We said, okay. That's a good point. What do you do about that? We said, why do we have a landlord who's shutting off utilities when the weather is this weather is this cold outside? They said, yeah. So what we did is we created in statute this procedure that's called emergency possessory actions. And I understand these maybe aren't used so often, but the way this is in statute right now is that a landlord can file a verified petition in small claims court alleging that the tenant is tearing up the property and that landlord needs an emergency order to get the person out. The tenant can file a petition alleging that landlord says done something like turn off my heat, and they can get a hearing. The statute requires that there be a hearing within 3 days of the petition being filed, which as you know is very fast in the the legal world. And I understand from the protect the practitioners that this is actually happening this way, that the hearings are being set this quickly. The law further states that if at the emergency hearing, the judge determines that there's credible evidence to support the allegations in the petition, the judge shall, not may, the judge shall issue an order to dispose of the complaints. So our alternative proposal is that instead of going through an extrajudicial process that this be put under the auspices of the emergency possessory order statute as a new basis. Like there'd be one basis for landlords for waste, one for tenants whether landlords doing something extreme. The third would be removal of squatters. And I have drafted a proposed amendment. As you know, there's a lot of bills on squatters that are circulating right now. One was just heard this morning. And I actually incorporated the definitions that were in 1189 in the definition of squatter because I thought they were pretty extensive. Thank you for adding invitee. I think that's really important too. And I think the goal of all of these is to, in fact, get rid of people who are truly squatters and not try to infringe on anything else, like landlord tenant or probate cases, divorce cases, whatever. So we appreciate that. So what we are requesting you to do then is to consider this alternative route. I mean, we applaud the goal. We think that you could get to the same place if you go through the emergency possessory order statute. Small claims court is easily accessible, fast procedure, relatively cheap. Thank you. All right. Do we have any questions? Thank you for your testimony. Any questions? All right. Thank you very much. Jenny Terry, then Elizabeth Berg, and then Andrew Bradley. Thank you, Senator Brown and members of the committee. My name is Jenny Terry. I am an attorney with Indiana Legal Services, regularly, representing tenants in eviction cases. Indiana Legal Services is a nonprofit statewide, legal agency, and we are the we are the largest provider of free civil legal assistance to eligible low income Hoosiers. ILS is here today to share our experiences that, these type of cases regarding unauthorized occupants do usually move pretty quickly through the courts. And to echo the framework that Ms. Williams, suggested as a preferable route to addressing this problem or other existing processes, whether it's through criminal trespass or, Senator Clark's bill to address this problem rather than sort of create a wholly new process, which unfortunately could be misused or abused by people who either don't understand the process or sort of see a quick route to evicting someone even though that's not the intention of this bill. And, you know, just to kind of echo some things that miss Williams said, we do still see landlords do some self help evictions even though it's not authorized in Indiana law. So there's always that potential that, a new process is going to be used in a way that's not intended. So Indiana is like most states and, relies on judicial processes to grant the landowner an order, which then they can take to law enforcement to remove someone from the property. We do have the emergency possessory order statute that Ms. Williams referred to that already provides an emergency path to a court hearing and possession order. There's also some other mechanisms in Indiana law specifically through, the temporary restraining order under trial rule 65. And, you know, our experience is that courts do schedule emergency hearings and conduct the proceedings very, quickly. We have the other concern we have is just asking law enforcement to take on some of the roles that is currently performed by the courts. You know, although the bills processes calls for the land owner to fill out this affidavit, there's no one there's no, no one to check to ascertain the veracity of those statements. I think law enforcement is is to accept the statements as is. Whereas if this person did have to come into court, there could be some, you know, making sure that, this person is, who they purport to be and they have the interests that they purport to have. When the law enforcement goes out to serve the order, there could also be some sticky situations for law enforcement in that situation. They're basically showing up without notice to the tenant. And what's anticipated by the bill is that they would ask the tenant or the occupant to if they have any documentation that shows that they are allowed to be there. And so you're sort of putting law enforcement in the role of judicial, to to weigh this evidence and decide, you know, is this does this create a legal right for the person to be there or not? So for those reasons, we just suggest that this, concern be addressed within existing processes. And I'd be happy to answer any questions you might have. All right. I've held my questions. But you keep saying and all of you have testified neutral keep using the word tenant. This is not a tenant. The person has no legal right to the property. So I just want to make clear. So if I I drove home to my house tonight and I find someone sitting there having a lovely time, they're a squatter. It's not one of my children who has come home. It is no one I know, and they have no right to be there. So I shouldn't call 911 because that's what I would do. I shouldn't call the police. I should say, hang on there. I'm gonna go get an order from the small claims court because I'm not going in the house with a squatter in my house and coexist. But you think that's okay? No. I'm I'm not suggesting that. And I I probably default. I'm gonna call the police. I agree. So the point is, it's as if we're creating a new crime here. There's no criminal penalty in the bill. We're not. We're just trying to offer clarification. I understand and we'll hear from the sheriff's associations testifying, but I understand there's concern. But sounds to me like every time they get a domestic violence call, that's the most heightened concern. So but if I call and say I got a stranger in my house, now I have to decide. Do I think that they believe that somehow they Airbnb in my house while I was gone for the day and somebody is doing this illegally, which could happen? Or should I think, no. This is just a creepy person in my house, but I don't know, so I'm gonna wait and get an order tomorrow from small claims. Yeah. I think my default use of tenant is because that's who I represent, and that's the perspective that I'm bringing to you today that I I'm worried about that constituency getting unintended consequences as a result of this bill. I'm not suggesting that calling law enforcement isn't the right thing. There's a way to clarify that, but that's the whole problem. Because in other states, law enforcement says, you say you squatter, believe you have a legal right, whether you Airbnb it or you have a fake lease that someone signed and is actually taking money from you. You believe you have a right to be there. Please say I'm not getting in. This is landlord tenant, but this isn't. These are people committing a crime. They are taking possession of someone else's property, illegally. They have no right to it. So that's my concern. Do we have any other questions? Senator Taylor. Thank you, madam chairwoman. You say that there exists an emergency. You can ask for an emergency hearing to trespass someone. Currently, it's emergency possessory order if the unauthorized document is committing waste. That's that's under the EPO. A landlord could also come into court just under the regular eviction statute and assert an emergency for other circumstances. Okay. We added a part that actually allows for immunity if the law enforcement officer does this in the scope of their business. And let's say someone is civilly accountable, they should have been there but the law enforcement officer removes them. Do you see the problem with the immunity do you see a problem with immunity from that? Yeah. I I think that the issue would be that, what maybe what I hear you saying is there's no there's if someone is wrongfully removed from the property, we're not gonna hold law enforcement responsible for that because they're just doing their job. Somebody executed this affidavit. They're doing what this law would require of them. But is there is there a relief for the person that was wrongfully removed? No. Let me let me be clear about this. I'm I'm not talking about the law enforcement officer doing their job. I'm talking about the law enforcement officer actually being negligent in their job. This is full immunity. Am I correct? You know, so I'm not really a constitutional civil immunity kind of that's not my area of legal. So Yeah. I'm more on the landlord tenant law than the, Well, I'll show you I'll show you the immunity part because it doesn't say that they get an exception for wanton wiffle misconduct, which is what we typically do. But that doesn't say that in this language. So I'll bring it to you. You can just When I I have I have it actually. Okay. So I mean, I I think if the law enforcement is carrying out the affidavit and And it will the course of their duties, then that provides immunity is what I would interpret that to to everyone. Even if even if they are negligent in doing their duty? I think there is a possibility of that. Okay. I just wanted to make sure. All right. Thanks. Any other questions? Thank you for your testimony. All right. So again, we have Elizabeth Berg, Then we have Andrew Bradley and then the last one is Mike Beiberstein. Thank you, Madam Chair and members of the committee. I'm Elizabeth Berg. I'm here on behalf of the Indiana Land Title Association, Indiana State Bar Association, probate, trust and real property section only. We just have a couple of tweaky things because that's what I always testify about. The first thing, and this goes to your point, madam chair, on the, small claims jurisdiction, if this progresses forward, you might consider adding a possessory action between a property owner and an alleged squatter. That'd be 33283-four. So that would allow, for example, Senator Cook, your mom and pop landlords to get into small claims to enforce whatever moves forward from this committee. The other thing as we're working with the other with the house because there's a lot of these bills this year, We have seen some language that has to do with possession and allowing the squatter to bring an action to potentially go against they were saying that they're a landlord in this situation to bring an action to have possession. This is a problem for real real estate attorneys and for land title because if someone is signing a warranty deed, they are saying they have the whole all the sticks. They're saying they have the right to possession that they are giving to someone else. Also for land title, we actually ensure possession rights. So as this moves along, if a cause of action is created by the individual squatter to come back, we would ask that that be limited in time on the possession issue only. Thank you. That's the main. For the first piece when you were saying the mom and pop landlords and the property owners and the possessory order process. Is that an extra an option? Is that what you're advocating for or instead of? So the current small claims jurisdiction specifically references landlord and tenant. If we're talking about this situation where there is no property rights, I think you need to add that just so we don't have jurisdictional questions at the small claims level. But it's not a requirement? It's not a requirement, but they would potentially have to go to superior and, circuit court instead of a small claims option. Alright. Thanks. Questions? Senator Poehle. Thank you, madam chair. Miss Burke, you'd say you had stated that you were advocating that if there was a cause of action that was brought by by the alleged squatter later on, you would wanna limit it to just the possessory interest of the the property? Correct. Why? In that situation, how the other bills are written? I didn't wanna get into the other bills because that's not what's before this committee. They have and it's section 6 in a lot of them. It just says a person may bring a civil cause of action for wrongful removal under this section. In those situations, there's no limitation of time. So would the person who is allegedly wrong have 15 days, 30 days, 6 months to bring that cause of action. Because in that situation, if we don't know of the action, it's not in the court of record. These are police records that are not what we regularly search Yep. The public record. We're not gonna find that. Yep. So then we've insured someone, and now they have a new roommate, and no one's happy. So the I guess the aspect of that, though, is, I mean, if you're talking just possessory interest so I'm trying to think about this, how this would work in the real world. So you have somebody who has all the worldly possessions in an apartment, in a house, or whatever. They're removed under this bill. You had law enforcement that comes in. They take everything. The prop or they they take the individual. They remove them. And the, you know, is this isn't like landlord tenant where the landlord then has to hold on to the property for x amount of time before the the property could be disposed of. Correct? It was, like, 45 days, I think is what it is with landlord tenant? I don't know. Okay. But in this instance Mhmm. That land that the owner of the property, whether it's a landlord or not, can take all of those worldly possessions, throw them in the garbage, sell them, do whatever. Because, really, there is no there is no relationship in the way that there is between landlord and tenant. So an individual and you what what you're asking for was essentially, well, now that person gets to go back into that apartment or that house. But as it pertains to, you know, any of their other worldly possessions, that can't be addressed, you know, in this section 6 that you're talking about. Is that correct? So in the other legislation that is in the house side, they do allow for kind of like a wrongful eviction and to get seek damages in that instance. So if someone lies on an affidavit and they can bring an action against that, the damages would still be available where you could bring an action for you took all my worldly possessions and you shouldn't have. Yeah. You signed a false affidavit to the police. We're just talking about the possession issue because a lot of times when we are talking about possession, when someone wants to get someone out of their house, they might have a transaction. Possession, when someone wants to get someone out of their house, they might have a transaction coming up very shortly. Now we allow the people to go in. If you change the small claims part, that individual might have an easier time getting to a court. Small claims is a little bit easier k. To file something, and then we can find it. Then there's a court record. So say that I'm I'm I'm evicted out of a place wrongly or not evicted. I moved as a squatter. Squatter. I've got my work computer now. And I'm you know, I I go. I file this action to get possession. It's an emergency action. I wanna get back into the into my apartment as soon as possible. But my landlord, you know, or what I thought was my landlord, took my work computer. I can't address that. And under under the same like, obviously, this is a, you know, this is an issue where I need to get that thing back as soon as possible. I I need to be able to work. I need to be able to demonstrate to my employer that, you know, what happened to my actual but you're saying keep these two things separate, let that person go through the possessory or the damages hearing could take months, could take however long in order to get that property back. Is that what you're saying? On just the damages for the possession of actually getting back into the apartment, that's what we would like to see. But what about the possession of the, you know, the the the personal possessions, not just possession of the the items? So I can't really answer how the police would handle that or the sheriff's decision. I don't think they would. I think under the way that the bill's written, it's just they remove the individual. It doesn't say anything about remove any of their items or what, you know, what happens to that person's belongings. Essentially, it's as if, hey, you've been removed. Your stuff's still here. Whatever happens to it, happens to it. It's you can't go back onto that property to get it, though. And there isn't a relationship between of ownership between the individual and the property, or the squatter and the the the landlord, essentially, in the situation. So I think this is kind of something that we're not really accounting for in the bill is what happens to that stuff and how does that person, you know, get that stuff back? How does that person handle that in a timely manner? So I don't know. I think when you bring this stuff up and you're talking about limiting it, that becomes a major concern to me. So thank you. Thank you. Andrew Bradley. Whoops. Andrew Brown. Thank you, Chair Brown and members of the Committee. My name is Andrew Bradley. I'm Senior Director for Policy and Strategy for Prosperity Indiana, the statewide Association For Community Economic Development. I mark myself neutral today, because our association is trying to determine the scope of really what this affects and also because of the stakes of, getting the solution right, and what might happen to members and communities if we don't get it right. I appreciate, Chair Brown that you said this is a complex issue. We think that is true. I surveyed some of the members of our board and policy committee asking have they seen this. A number of our members are developers of housing, and, they take vacant and abandoned properties and transform that either into housing or other uses. And some of them have seen squatting. For example, if you have a boarded up unit, that they want to redevelop, they are not quite ready, and somebody is able to pry the plywood off, you know, you may have squatting. But, those members have said they've been able to use trespassing. They don't find that that's insufficient to deal with those issues. Other of our members are, landlords, affordable housing providers. And that gets into the emergency possession that we discussed. So we're hopeful that we can find a solution that is really narrowly tailored to exactly what squatters are and that we don't cast too wide of a net, and ultimately end up endangering vulnerable households. As this committee has been discussing already this session, Indiana has a lack of housing. We have a reducing homeownership. We have a rental market where there's too few homes to go around and then a high rate of eviction and an increasing rate of homelessness. And again, you know, not conflating tenants and, squatters, but we wanna make sure that vulnerable households who have seen housing costs rise and maybe in situations where you want to get in front of a judge to determine the facts aren't scooped up into a place where they're adding to that rate of homelessness. So appreciate the careful measured approach to this. Thank you, Mr. Bradley. Any questions? All right. Thank you very much. The last person we have signed up is Mr. Beiberstein. Madam Chair, members of the committee, Mike Beiberstein with Frost Brown Todd. I represent the Indiana Sheriffs Association and our association, is in front of you neutral on the bill. We wanna point out 2 main concerns we have and I'm happy to answer any questions after that. The first is just a manpower issue with some of our smaller communities. The sheriff's offices might only have a handful of deputies on at a certain time. And so this potentially could have some issues there. And then the second, Senator Pohl brought up is a big concern for our membership and that is the property. We would like to see something specific in the bill that does not put the sheriff in charge of the property. The liability, the costs associated, all are large concerns for us. I'm happy to answer any questions. Okay. So you talk about the manpower issue. My example, I drive home tonight. Someone's in my house. I'm gonna call 911. Are you gonna say, you think someone's in your house illegally? I got a manpower. Someone gonna kill you, shoot you, whatever. But if it's just a potential squatter, we're gonna hold on this. True. But I no. No. No. I I understand your situation you're presenting. I wasn't saying true that we're so a deputy would arrive or a local police department person would arrive for the crime that you're reporting. I'm not saying they wouldn't. I'm just listing off a concern to my associate. So today, we have abandoned buildings that are boarded up. We had one in this past year. They continue to board it up. Squatters continually got in there, set fires to keep themselves warm or just to mess around, who knows, and the building burned to the ground. Known to the police, it was just a constant cycle. We're not actually talking about those people because the police go. Or another case where I know where someone was redeveloping a property, was boarded up, Squatters kept getting in there to the point where the police would go in and say, whatever, the police knew him. Joe, come on out. Right? An addict who's squatting in there, graffiti destroying the property, and they just say, come on out, move them along. Right? That's happening today. Agreed. Right? We're talking about my example or the example of I've got I'm out of town, someone pretends it's their home or the Airbnb it. Someone just shows up. It's an online site and somehow they've Airbnb'd my home or I come home and someone has pretended to be a landlord and rent this property. So have you seen a lot of those cases where they've been calling the police? Because I think when a stranger's in your home, you're still gonna call the police. Agreed. I think so. I just that was brought up as an issue on our call from last week, when we discussed the bill because I guess for Marion County as an example, we don't know how many of these issues might pop up. And I I was just there was concern that it might flood the system. Okay. Yeah. I mean, I haven't heard of any law enforcement coming and saying there's this is a problem, or you need to address it. We're trying to get ahead of this. But on the other hand, I think it's interesting we're talking about the person do you believe let me put it this way. Do you believe law enforcement thinks if someone's on someone else's property illegally, that they have any property rights? If they're running out the back door and drop their phone or brought their suitcase with them and leave it behind or whatever. Do they have any right to that? No. Okay. I think that's a trespass. And we also see where there are homeless encampments on public properties. Sure. And the cities go in sometimes, clean them up. And I don't think they put them in a storage unit. I think they just toss it all. I don't know how every jurisdiction would handle that. Somehow if someone squats in someone's private property, we need to make sure that we take care of their private possessions that they've left behind even though they were there illegally? That that was my testimony. My testimony was that I wanted to make sure the sheriffs weren't put as responsible for that property. Okay. Great. I appreciate that. Do you have any other questions? Senator Pohl. Thank you, Madam Chair. Mr. Bieber signed a couple of different things. Can you explain to me like I think that's what I'm struggling with here is why can't we address these issues with the trespass law? I I think you could, I guess. I I understand. I guess I'm sympathetic to the arguments that are being made related to timing. But if you're on my property and I call the police, you you're guilty of the crime of trespass, I would think. And so that it can be addressed that way. Well, and and in that instance, right, you have, you know, you have discretion as to how you wanna how you want to address the situation, whether you want to arrest somebody, whether you want to tell somebody, hey, buddy, it's time to move on. You know, however, the the police want to address it, currently, they have that ability to do so with their own discretion. Is that right? Yes. So, you know, in looking at the law, this essentially says that they shall remove. This is a this is a shall provision, meaning that it's removing discretion under the under the law. If I'm not mistaken Amendment 2 went into the bill, correct? Sorry. It was hard to hear outside. I think that gives some discretion to law enforcement as well. That's if the I thought the that was the invitee amendment, though. Was wasn't that? There's language in that that allows for law enforcement, I think, to take into consideration other things at the scene that allows them to use their discretion. Yeah. But but what are the 2 cases? Hold on. Let me double check on this. Okay. So yeah. Yeah. Okay. So I guess that's my concern though is that it's only in these limited cases, not necessarily in every single case. You were essentially removing it though. So if an individual calls, hey, there's a lack of a lease agreement the way that the law reads. Like, the police have to. And I mean, I guess my question is to you, what do you suspect happens if police decide, hey, we don't want to get involved with this still? This is still even though this law exists, we don't want to get involved with this. From your perspective, how does that play out for you guys? I mean, I'm catching my answer on I've read this, but I feel like maybe we're reading it differently. I I feel like they have a level of discretion at the scene. Okay. But if the law stated is as them to remove the person, they'll do that. And there's a level of protection for them. I mean, the specific language states shall hold on. Law enforcement officer dispatched to remove a squatter shall remove the squatter from the property unless law enforcement officer discovers credible written evidence that the individual is not a squatter because the individual blah, blah, blah, whatever. So in this situation, if you have a lease that is not a written lease, you don't there's no, there's essentially nothing here that would provide any discretion the way that the law is written to police officers to not remove that individual. Is that right? I think that the law enforcement officer determined that he didn't meet the definition of squatter, which is in the bill that they could use their discretion to not do anything. That's my reading of the bill. Yeah. But again, it says that it's got to be written. It has to be a written evidence. So if you have somebody that's on a month to month lease Okay. Senator Pol, with all due respect, we're not talking about a landlord tenant relationship. Correct. So when you say a month to month lease, that is not what this is doing. Correct. But in a situation in which you're a month to month lease and I'm gonna Don't say month to month because I'm gonna end your testimony. We're not talking about a month to month lease. If I'm a nefarious We're talking about someone who's on no legal right to be on the property. Correct. But if I am a nefarious landlord that says, you know what? I wanna get rid of this guy, and he's on month to month. And I can go ahead and just tell police because there's no written evidence that there's a lease. That's the situation that section 6 is just essentially addresses where you'd be gotta go and prove, okay. No. I've got a text message or I've got something that I had that's not a lease, but it's something that I can demonstrate by bringing in evidence, by bringing in witnesses or whoever else to demonstrate that I did have a a valid, you know, right to be on that property. But to the police officer, there's nothing written. So I am a squatter under the law because there's nothing that's written as credible evidence. That's my concern is that you would have nefarious landlords that would essentially say, officer Bieberstein, you have to remove this individual because there's nothing that's written. So that's my concern. I and I understand what, you know, senator Brown. I'm not trying to pigeonhole people that are legally there that could prove it on the spot. I'm talking about individuals that find themselves in a crunch. I gave this guy $200 to stay in this room, and now me and my kids are out because he wanted to kick us out. That's my concern. So but one last one. What what do you think that the actual burden is going to be on the police department in handling, you know, what you are are at the sheriff's departments or whoever you know, I know you're representing the sheriff. So how does this look for them? Like, what what's the ultimate burden on them? I don't I don't know if I know the answer to that fully, but it was just a concern that was raised. Okay. Alright. Thank you very much. We have no other witnesses. Senator Gaskell, would you like to close? Yes, please. Sorry. This is your opportunity to ask questions first of senator Gaskell because we delayed. If you didn't get them answered, I will have to say if you continue to repeat the same questions every witness, I'm going to have to cut you off because we got a long day. Senator Gaskell, anyone have any questions for Senator Gaskell? Yes. What I'm concerned about what what do you mean? I'll discuss it. Okay. Alright. Senator, my my concern is the immunity for law enforcement. In your original bill, you did not have this in there. Is this something that you feel is necessary is to give immunity to law enforcement officers if they are incorrect? In today's environment, I think it's important. Having been a former County Councilman, I was able to see the lawsuits many of which Came in against our officers that were frivolous. And well, here is the bottom line is that if you're the officer that comes on to the scene and I'm the property owner, notice I didn't use the word landlord, property owner and I provide you with an affidavit saying this person is in my house, they don't have a rental agreement, they don't have my permission, they don't have any interest, any other interest in my property, they've never had a rental agreement, never had my permission or any other interest in the property in the past and I sign that affidavit under penalty of perjury, then if somebody is 1 of 2 people are going to lie when the officer gets there. Either the squatter is going to say, yes, I got a rental agreement. He's trying to get rid of me. Or the property owner is gonna provide an affidavit that says, Hey, if I'm lying, I'm subjecting myself to perjury. So if the officer relies on that statement, I think he's on safe ground. However, I support the amendment. I don't know if it was a chairperson amendment or someone else but I think it further strengthens the protections for law enforcement. And quite honestly, I want this to be a law enforcement friendly bill. I have a son that's a police officer. I have a dear cousin that is a, a police officer. I've got a brother-in-law who is a police officer and I have another family member who is a retired police officer. And my intention is to make this law enforcement friendly. And I've found from listening to some of their stories of how their job works that some of these people who are squatting are guilty of other crimes and have warrants. So you meet their probable cause, I'm no longer correct me any of you who are but you meet the probable cause to check them out and you see they have warrants, you might make an additional arrest for some other crimes. Most of these people that are going to do this are drug addicts who would sell out their mother for another fix. And so what are they going to do to the property owner when they come home? So law enforcement needs the protection to be able to protect the innocent property owner and not get dragged into a frivolous lawsuit. So I support that wholeheartedly and I thank you for your amendment. All right. Senator? Thank you. Madam Chairwoman. Senator Gaskell, I appreciate that. I got several family members who are law enforcement officers too. But this amendment would allow the homeowner to lie and the law enforcement to for law enforcement officer to enforce on that lie, and then there would be no remedy for someone who was improperly removed. Yeah. But would you put yourself at risk of perjury to do that? You and I have talked and shared landlord stories before that we're both landlords. You know, the process is somewhat onerous for a landlord to go to small claims court, but I'll take it over commit and perjury any day. Actually, I've never admitted. In Marion County, it's very easy to evict a tenant. You do it every week. They have one day in every small claims court every week. I could evict a tenant very quickly in Indianapolis. So I can't talk about your jurisdiction, but if I ever said it's complicated, I was incorrect. Routinely, it takes 6 weeks to get on the agenda, but I'll take that over perjury. Okay. What I'm trying to say, Senator Gasco, and I'm just asking because I understand what you're trying to do. The heartburn that I have is that if someone is improperly removed, we have an obligation as legislators to protect them from false allegations. And when you give civil immunity for the enforcement of something that's incorrect, that is even as far as the language goes right here, Senator Gaskell, it could be wanton and willful misconduct on behalf of the law enforcement officer and they would have immunity. I don't think that's Wait a minute. How would that happen? Because the process is not triggered until the property owner fills out an affidavit and under penalties of perjury. So either they've got the affidavit or they don't. If they have the affidavit and law enforcement relies on it, they've done nothing improper. If the property owner lied, all of the punishment and the recourse should be against that property owner who committed perjury, not against the law enforcement officer who relied on it in good faith. I don't know why you keep saying this affidavit. It could be just a statement from the property owner. A property owner who discovers that a squatter is occupying the owner's property may execute and ask David May. State right. It doesn't say shall, it says may. There's more. Oh, sorry. There's more. Okay? Stating that the squatter is occupying the property. I read part of this before. Now a property owner may provide a law enforcement agency with a copy of the affidavit described in section 3 of this chapter. And then it goes on to tell what the law enforcement agency will do once they receive the affidavit. If I were, I've never been a police officer. I I have several people that I love a whole lot that are. But if I were them, I would not remove someone as a squatter under this law if they're not willing to put their John Hancock on the affidavit. Well, I I know you would. I know you would. But there's no shall. You never read shall to me. That's why I said may. And that means that there's the option to provide it or not. And all I'm asking you is if someone says and you could have a law enforcement officer who knows the property owner, maybe even knows the squatter, and they could do something that's nefarious, and they would have immunity. That's all I'm saying. I don't understand what the difficulty if we put Walton in willful misconduct or some kind of negligence on passive that that doesn't give immunity for that, I'm I'm willing to, to be in favor of the legislation. But right now, as we see as I see it today, it would be wanson and willful misconduct on behalf of the law enforcement officer and they would be immune for civil liability. So if you were chief of a municipal police department or a sheriff, would you advise your police officers to remove someone who appeared to be a squatter if the property owner was not willing to fill out the affidavit? Me? Yeah. What would you advise your officers to do in that case? Well, I don't know what I would do. I'll be honest with you. I don't know. I mean, that's a hypothetical about The way the bill is written is it gives the owner of the property a little bit of leverage. If you go through all these owner steps, in my opinion, to prove you are the owner and then you decide you want to do that, you may do that or not. Right. That's right. But but only if you do that, if the owner decides to take that decision, then within 48 hours, the police officer shall. But that's what But if they don't it says after receipt of the affidavit. Says made, madam chief or woman. It says a law enforcement may dispatch 1 or more to remove a squatter after receipt of the affidavit. The owner has the discretion to fill this out so that they can trigger this system. But the law enforcement is only dispatched after they have the receipt of the affidavit. That's how the bill reads. And it says that they shall remove the squatter unless and it lists those things. So I think the only one who would be doing something nefarious would be the property owner. You've already heard from law enforcement representatives that they are understaffed and overworked with more than they can handle on a daily basis. So, why would they want to go out and do something nefarious that could cause a lot of trouble for them? I mean, it's very simple. Property owner fills out the affidavit, gives it to law enforcement, law enforcement now has the ability to remove that squatter without worrying about legal repercussions. And I think it's law enforcement friendly. We have questions or discuss this is going to be questions and or discussion on the build time. Senator Clark would like he had been waiting to have some discussion. Thank you, madam chairman, members. I was law enforcement officer for over 33 years and I was an elected sheriff. So every one of these actions, the sheriff does it, right? Not to city police. When you go through your civil processes, you have orders. We were the ones that served every single one of those. It doesn't always address what happens to property in those situations. Typically, my officers would give the person 48 hours. I think what we have to do here is give the police officers a little bit of credit. They're actually really smart men and women and do a fine job. Senator Brown, in your example, if you go home tonight and someone is in your house, call 911. The police will come and they will arrest that person immediately for residential entry as a level 6 felony. And then they will also charge them criminal trespass, mischief if they damage your door, and burglary if they commit a felony inside your home. Piece of cake. Senator Taylor's example, you guys are talking about your your properties that you own, 100% remedied in the civil system. I've been to lots of landlord. We always get called. You say, well, the police are gonna get called more work. Maybe. But we always get called anyway because you all call us for every problem you have in your life, which is okay. Right? We raise our hand for the job. I'm not complaining. But we have a lot of times where we have to discern civil stuff. And often the answer is, hey, this is civil. You know, you need to go to court. I think the best example that I've heard today has been I'm in Florida for 3 months, I come home, and there's a person living in my home. Now that's not a guy with a backpack who's sitting at my table drinking a cup of coffee. That's a dude who's getting mail at my house, who's moved his stuff in, his baby's got a room down there, there's diapers, there's food. And he says, look, I I live here. Now maybe that's a situation where somebody defrauded me as that guy who's moved in. And I've bought into this lie that a third party has tricked me into. The police are pretty smart. In that case, this is still civil. Right? This gives us an out. It says they may do it, senator Taylor, and I think that's important because we don't wanna lock you as a landlord into shall doing that. You may also say, thanks for coming, officer. You know, this is my uncle. I didn't realize it was him at first. He's fine. Y'all can go home and the police leave. They might document it, take a report for you if you want, and go on your way. But I can tell you in other counties not in Marion, I was in Hendricks, which is really close. It takes weeks months to get people out. I when we were doing that the legal way and we had an order to remove a person from a property, it was always a nightmare. They always had their stuff there. It always took us 48 hours and they never got it out. Sometimes we had to resort to forcibly taking them out and getting trucks to move their stuff. But that was pretty rare. Most people, you say, look, we're humans. We get it. It's tough. You're getting evicted. You got 48. Please get your stuff. But I think that it does give the police credit. I don't think that I could support it if it didn't have that amendment in it. But please remember, senator, that it also says acting within the scope of the law. It doesn't say do whatever you want, be a wild policeman, and go crazy. It says acting within the scope of the law. If there's bad guys doing bad things as officers, none of us want them in there either. And I'm sure that mister Beaverstein would agree that nobody wants bad police, but the majority are not that. And they're just trying to do their job. And if they follow the scope of the law, it says acting within the scope, in my mind means doing it the right way. So thank you, Madam Chair. I think that is all I've got. Do we have any other discussion? Madam chair, I have to respond. Go ahead, Senator Taylor. Thank you, madam chair. I don't know if it's a question or a concern that people have. All I can do is read the 4 corners of the document. That's all I can do. Acting within the scope of your duties does not allow should not allow for Walton and willful misconduct. Acting in the scope of your duties could be enforcing the affidavit, but knowing that this person has a right to be on the property. I apologize to any member or law enforcement officer that I may offended with immunity. I just said, and I'll make it very clear right now, I will support immunity as long as it's limited. The language that I have in front of me with the may clause, everybody wants to distinguish between may and shall. Okay? It doesn't say shall. It says may, and then everything goes to that. Even if you write an affidavit, which I think the law enforcement officer, yes, would ask you to do that, senator, Gaskell, it doesn't require it. That's all I was saying. There's this is not something we need to get into philosophical discussions about. I wanna support the bill. Okay? Just change the language. I mean, I don't understand why we are sitting here arguing about a may and a shall. Make it a shall so we make it clear instead of a may. And by the way, I've had 25 years of legal training. I read documents every day. All we do is make the law. The enforcement of the law is through law enforcement and then the judicial branch is there to make decisions. Let's make it clear so that these law enforcement officers will have immunity so that they don't take a chance. That's all I'm saying. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. All right. Thank you very much. We've had discussion. We had a motion and a second. Do we have any other discussion? Yes. Senator Buck second. Okay. Please call the roll. And no, everyone's here. Senator Alexander? Yes. Senator Buck? Aye. Senator Freeman. Aye. Senator Carrasco. Aye. Senator Glick. Aye. Senator Cook. Aye. Senator Clark. Aye. Senator Randolph. Senator Poll. Briefly explain my vote. This obviously pertains to housing. We've got a lot of people that are very, very desperate to find housing out there. I think there are a lot of people that are struggling to pay their bills. I think there's a lot of people that are going to find themselves desperate to jump into a living situation that might seem too good to be true. And to me, what this essentially could do could be very, very impactful on people that are very, very vulnerable, much to their own, much to their own potential ignorance of the law. They may agree to a non written, an unwritten lease agreement. Whatever it takes for them to find the housing that they need. So in this situation, I think particularly the fact that we have to provide civil liability for not only a police officer but for the entire law enforcement agency. You know, when you're doing that and it's in a way for actions that impact somebody's living situation, their livelihood, what could be their job, what could be impacts on them far beyond what we at this table could even understand. That really concerns me. That really, really, really does concern me because what we're essentially saying is, well, yeah, this could be really bad, but we don't want the individuals who are playing judge, jury and executioner in the instance of, hey, I got to show up to the scene and try to deal with this to make those decisions. I think that this is what we're essentially signaling is, yeah, this might have really bad implications. So I have to vote no for that reason. Senator Taylor? No. Chair Brown? So I'm going to explain my vote. So I just want to make this very clear. If you want to increase housing costs in Indiana, then give rights to people who have no legal right to the real property. So we are not looking to create homeless situations. We are actually looking to make sure that people who own property have the right to use their property. So I'm an emphatic yes, honest as amended. 8 to 2. Thank you, Senator Gaskell. Next we have Senator Burn. Now, I might have spoken a little bit. Nope, come on up, Senator Burn. And I'm going to say what I meant earlier when I was saying about the questions too is on both the next bills we have most of the people who have signed up have signed up to speak on both bills. Not going to limit that testimony that if you want to speak on it because they're a little bit different. But on the other hand, your remarks are probably going to be somewhat similar. So if you come back up to speak on the second bill, I would appreciate then that you would modify and reduce your remarks. So with that, Senator Byrne, go right ahead. We have Senate Bill 289. No. No. 289. Yeah. Go ahead. Yeah. Thank you, madam chairwoman. An amendment. Yeah. Amendment 4. Yes. Alright. I'll make sure. So we have amendment number 4, which removes the private cause of action in Senator Burns bill and removes a line that suggests that when we look at the authorship of materials posted, for K-twelve, We felt that the language in the first three, citations covered it. So there's a line that the teacher's identity is taken out. So with that, I'd like to move the amendment first. Everyone's discussing the same bill. Do we have a motion to move Amendment number 4? We have a second. Can we take it by consent? All right. Thank you. We have an amended bill. Senator Burn, go ahead. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman Brown and members of the committee for hearing Senate Bill 289. This bill will ensure equal protection under the law in Indiana. Indiana laws that allow for government discrimination based on immutable characteristics like race and gender. This policy promotes equal protection under the law by prohibiting government from reinforcing stereotypes based on race, sex, ethnicity, religion, and national origin. Instead, people should be respected based on their own unique characteristics, life skills, and experiences. Under this policy, public institutions may not require employees to adopt or affirm any stereotype or generalizations based on race, sex, ethnicity, religion, or national origin. It also increases transparency in education by requiring public schools to make curriculum and training materials about non discrimination, equity, diversity or bias that makes it public accessible. 9 states have enacted this reform in recent decades. Indiana Governor with Executive Order 14 declares equality under the law for all citizens in Indiana. The state legislature should follow suit by codifying this protection for future generations of all Hoosiers. Thank you very much, Senator Byrne. Again, I think we're going to follow the same. We have a lot of people. We have 10 people 11 people signed up to testify in this bill. So I'm going to call you off. Please be paying attention so we just can make sure everyone has an opportunity to speak. First, we up we will have Sandy Washburn, then we will have William Hudgins, then we will have Russ Skiba. And I will be timing all of you 2 You're going to get a stern look from me 2 minutes, you're going to get a stern look. Hopefully, that's all we need to do today. Kate? Thank you very much. Thanks for all your work. So, I'm here to oppose 289, as written with the amendment. And, I think this requirement that all materials be posted is an unreasonable demand on educators. There's no compensation. There's no resource extra resources, and educators are either gonna fail in their attempts to comply, or they'll just forego this important work. Am I doing something wrong? No. Go right ahead. Okay. Alright. Great. Alright. Thank you. This law, even though it doesn't ex explicitly prohibit diversity, equity, and inclusion training and work, it will chill all the speech and training and purposeful study of concepts related to diversity, equity, and inclusion. The law communicates that topics ought to be avoided and that there are serious consequences that can result if individuals demonstrate that they value any of the concepts listed. 289 implies that diversity, equity, and inclusion are not valuable and that there's no need to engage in the purposeful and intentional efforts to increase the representation of minoritized populations. It doesn't it will preclude putting practices into a place that attempt to close gaps, gaps that we continue to have in this state around achievement, around discipline, around employment, around health outcomes and around opportunities. So that's it. I don't want you to move this bill forward. All right. Thank you very much. Do we have any questions? All right. Thank you very much, Ms. Wachs, for your testimony. Next we have William Hudgins and then we have Russ Kiba and then Jorell Blakely. Good afternoon, madam chair, ranking members of the committee. Senators, ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. My name is Randy Hudgins. I speak as a social studies teacher of 20 years in public schools in the state. Currently serve as a US history teacher at Warren Central High School here in Indianapolis. I rise in opposition to Senate Bill 289 as currently written and amended. This bill is an effort by our state government to control the past and how it is taught in Indiana classrooms. It does so by forcing teachers who are simply following state standards and DOE mandated textbooks and approved textbooks to successfully document inside all materials for 180 days of classroom instruction. We already have mechanisms in public schools that provide this information. I'm a parent. I can look at any point what my child is doing. I get excessive I've I've got a lot of emails from teachers. I don't always get a chance to read them. As a teacher, I have to put my entire curriculum every single day up on Canvas, and it's the same for pretty much every place in the state. Parents can see that right now. They can look at it right now. They can do their own research, so to speak. We love that phrase nowadays. Also, I objected to the fact that civil lawsuit was even brought into it. I know it is amended, but the fact that it's even brought up and threatened to teachers is, is not a credit to our profession and disrespectful to our profession. I came to this committee expecting to hear and see evidence presented as to why this bill was necessary. I anticipated evidence to be given of documents used in the course of lessons, assignments handed out, students' grades that were unfairly deducted due to instances of teacher bias, refusal to follow state standards, or worse yet, forcing a one-sided, badly false interpretation of certain aspects of American history. I have not gotten that evidence so far. I hope to get it soon. The requirement of exhaustingly documented material using class places excessive burden on teacher creativity and forces teachers to just have a standard curriculum that they follow and not allow themselves to, be to make their gifts, evident in the classroom. Most troubling portion of this bill stipulates how school employees can address issues of race, ethnicity, sex, and bias. I brought with me the state standards since this is not an education committee but a judiciary committee of how many state standards would be violated just by the simple teaching, in the areas of world history, geography and history of the world, sociology, psychology, US history, 8th grade, and US history, 11th grade. And I would be happy to leave those with you if you need to. It is my view that this does not promote equality under the law, and it limits the topics and fosters the lack of equality, towards students, especially those who, are often left out. I close by asking what problems is this bill here to solve and what evidence do we have that these problems are occurring and who's your classrooms? Is this coming from a set of verifiable facts and evidence that problems are occurring in our classroom and our curricula? What documented remedies were attempted and failed to get to this point on the part of parents and other stakeholders? Are we basing this more on wishes, inclinations, and dictates of our passions or on hard evidence? I've finished by suggesting that as a solution, the General Assembly should direct the State Department of Ed to undergo a thorough study of the concerns expressed in this bill with work to work with principals, superintendents, school boards, teachers, parents, community organizations, and other stakeholders across the state to ensure that we're not only eradicating stereotypes and discrimination from our classrooms, which no teacher would subscribe to and no teacher would allow to be taught in their classroom no matter what. We are educated professionals, highly educated. Many of us have master's degrees. We are not taught that. We do not teach that. And also, we would like to offer a robust curriculum that empowers teachers to give a full accounting for the American experience that celebrates the contributions of all who embrace the vision of this country as the last, best hope for a better humanity. I thank you for your attention today. Thank you very much. Do we have any questions? Senator Taylor? Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. Do you think you could teach about Martin Luther King if this all was in place? Well, given the fact that we're talking about race, ethnicity, sex, and religion, race is out and religion probably is too since he was a, given his, occupation. What about the Holocaust? That would be really thorny as well because we would get into race and ethnicity for sure and definitely religion. Is the Holocaust required to be taught in our standards right now k through 12? It is, although when they Okay. Is it under the law? It is under the law, sir. But Okay. I wanna make it quick. You can just let me let me finish. Yes, sir. Is MLK required to be taught in our standards for education in the state of Indiana? It should be, within the state standard. Yes, sir. It is. Okay. Thank you. So you wouldn't be able to do what the state standards tell you to do if this law were going to place? Well, one thing from a teacher's point of view, the moment that and this encourages a grievance process to be, put in place by the school district, grievance process to be followed by a parent or employee or emancipated minor, who happens to disagree or think that stereotypes have been proliferated in the classroom. And, honestly, it's one of those where once a a complaint is registered to a, administrator or central office, Usually that means they contact the teacher and say, look, we've gotten complaints, we've gotten concerns, we need to dial this down a little bit. Doctor. Okay. So let me just I wanted to make it very clear. The requirements in the law is that we teach about the Holocaust. It is in statute. Yes, to my knowledge. Could you teach? You would be we would be forcing you to violate the law if you couldn't teach about the Holocaust. Am I correct? I would feel like I was walking on eggshells in teaching it. Thank you. You have a question, sir? Okay. Thank you, Madam Chair. In a practical manner, how would you go about, like, posting this? Or who does that? Who's actually in charge? Each individual teacher? Each individual teacher. We also have an accepted curriculum that we work together as a department as all US history teachers. I can only speak for Warren Central High School where I'm employed. We have a common curriculum that we agree upon, a common pacing guide. It is based on the state standards. It is based on the curriculum materials that are, approved by the state board of education, that are approved by our school board, and that are approved by a, textbook committee. And so we put together common lessons. We then posted on our learning management system, which is Canvas. There are many others that, through in schools throughout the state. If you are a parent, you know that because you probably tried to navigate through all of them and remember what all your logins were to them because that happens for my children as well. They are all posted there. Parents can open the assignment. Parents have access to the textbook. If we send a textbook home, they have, access to that. And oftentimes, there are citations for those documents that are there. Like I teach a dual credit class, we have that if it's something that is provided as part of that curriculum by Indiana University as well. So in a realistic way, if you had a parent that came to you and said, you know, I don't I don't want you teaching my, you know, and I think it is in violation of law for you to teach, teach your class about Martin Luther King or the Holocaust or any of the events that, you know, have a strong racial component to them, you know, essentially us learning from our mistakes in history, What do you do in that situation? Generally, you first engage the parent and try and find the nature of their concern. And a lot of times, it ends at that. You just kind of have a common agreement. You let them know that it's part of the state standards, it's part of the agreed upon curriculum. And, that usually is kind of where that, that conversation ends. If they wanna get your department chair involved or a member administration involved, there's usually a very easy way to do that. I'm not sure So what happens if this bill passes though? If this bill passes, first of all, everyone is looking over their shoulder, especially those that work in rural and, small town Indiana because, if here in Indianapolis, you're not gonna get that many in Fort Wayne, South Bend, north Northwest Indiana, Bloomington, places like that. You're not gonna really get that. But I worry about the young teachers who are, you know, maybe they're in a dual credit class where a lot of their stuff is determined by Indiana University, and they're teaching certain things that are on challenging topics. Because let's face it, you can't teach all of American history or world history or just about any social studies discipline without, hitting on some very difficult topics, and especially in our hypercharged political atmosphere. And all it takes is 1 or 2, interested individuals who want to maybe have it out for the teacher or just disagree or it goes against their personal sensibilities to have a teacher face scrutiny or even worse according to the language in this bill, even the bill as amended. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, madam chair. Very briefly, how long has DEI been in existence? I cannot speak to that. I'm not an expert in DEI. I'm just testifying mostly to the areas in this bill, involving the teaching of race, ethnicity, sex, and religion. So you have no idea when DEI existed? I'm not an expert in that, sir. I teach you as an expert. You're speaking as an expert. You've stated that in your testimony. I mean, it's, it wasn't around when I was in school. I know that. It wasn't around when my children were in school. So I'm trying to get a handle on I was taught the holocaust. I was taught about many things you've mentioned that can't be. So I'm trying to get a timeline because honestly, I don't know when it came in existence or how it came into existence. But, you're testifying that, you think it's bad but yet you have no idea when it was done or what it was like before it was done. You I think you've taught long enough that you taught prior to existence. And so I'm trying to find out when was the switch over that you say you have no idea? Well, DEI is well, first of all, this is a bill on nondiscrimination in employment and education. It's my understanding the DEI bill is, Senate Bill 235, sir. No. I'm asking when did DEI become existing? It's in employment. It is everywhere. There's departments of DEI. Yes. So I'm trying to figure out because I don't know, so I thought it would be a simple answer, but thank you. If I may answer your question in the best of my ability, sir, what I'm talking about is how the provisions of this bill would provide a profound challenge to social studies teachers in our state to do their very basic jobs to fulfill state standards that are agreed upon, whether depending I understand. It is irregardless of our opinions on what DEI is or is not, sir. I'm trying the question was you repeated your testimony when this came into be. That's all I've asked. That's all I was wanting to know. Okay. Well, I was to say it's a licensed teacher. I am not sure, and it is not part of, any training, that I can recall outside of maybe a few things around the year 2020. But even in our district, we've only had a couple trainings on that, which I found to be beneficial to understanding our student population and the diverse student populations that we serve in the MSD Warren Township, sir. Alright. Thank you. I I have a question for you. Do you currently require or compel a student to affirm, adopt, or adhere to any belief or concept with respect to race, sex, ethnicity, religion, national origin when you're teaching? I do not believe that I do. That's all I ask. Thank you very much. Yes, ma'am. All right. Thank you very much for your testimony. I appreciate it. Thank you, Sanders. Next we have that was Mr. Hudgins. Next we have Mr. Skiba, Mr. Blakely and then Mr. Daley. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Chair Brown and members of the committee. I'm Professor Russ Skiba, Co Founder of the University Alliance For Racial Justice and Professor Emeritus at IU. I'm not here representing Indiana University. I want to talk about the things that 289 says are not prohibited. First Amendment protected speech, volunteering to attend a DEI training, some forms of research. But regardless of what 289 claims not to be, it is loaded, as Mr. Hutchins pointed out. It is loaded with provisions that severely chill free speech and education. It requires posting wall materials and training on topics related to race and racism. How many districts will be willing and able to afford that monumental task? Under 289, any employee, parent, or emancipated student can file a complaint for what they see as a violation regardless of whether that complaint has any merit. If the complainant is unsatisfied, they can take it all the way to the Department of Education. In the old edition, could sue for damages. I don't know where that stands as far as the amendments. Which school corporation regardless is going to risk that? Voluntary attendance by teachers at a training is permitted, but how many will choose to do so under these conditions? When you make an activity so dangerous to engage in that no reasonable person will take that risk, what is the difference between that and outright prohibition? Personally, I'm glad to see exceptions made in this bill for research on racial and ethnic disparities. That is exactly what I did as a researcher for my entire career at IU. This past spring, IU President Pam Witten wrote to congratulate me for being recognized as among the top 2% of research scientists in the world by Stanford University. Regardless of what the bill says about research not being prohibited, none of that work would have even been remotely possible under these bills. We use the words and topics forbidden by these bills extensively in our research. It is impossible not to do so. We encourage school corporations to develop training and materials that were actually shown to reduce disparities. None of the over $15,000,000 in grants we received to do that work would have been possible under these bills. So let's not kid ourselves about 289. It doesn't matter whether the sponsors of this bill come right out and prohibit DEI or simply impose draconian consequences for DEI efforts. Both have the exact same intent and outcome, making advocacy for fairness and civil rights impossible in the state of Indiana. Unless you are certain that the bill does not do that, I'd encourage you to conclude that this bill is just not ready to be enshrined into law and vote against Senate Bill 289. Thank you very much. All right. Any questions? Senator Kress? Thank you for being here. I just I want to clarify because I've heard that this does this bill not just require that the training materials that are used for the faculty and staff be posted on the website, right? Right. I'm assuming the outline of the training and the curriculum for the training. And so I'm having a little bit of difficulty understanding why parents wouldn't have the ability or shouldn't have the ability to be able to see this already. Not like I think the person before you talked about how they're already posting their outlines on, like, Canva and whatnot or, you know, whatever, resources teachers use to put their syllabi. This is talking about something different though. This is about what teachers and staff are being trained on. Is that not correct? I think it's I agree with you. It's about the training. It's about the training. It's about the materials. Yeah. This was a similar issue that was faced originally in the anti CRT bills in 2022 that were rejected by the literature by the legislature. Parent transparency is a great thing. And we ought to be looking for legislature, there would be a tremendous amount of work. This is we're talking about every there would be a tremendous amount of work. This is we're talking about every possible instance. And given the draconian penalties in this bill, what district would not want to make sure that they attended to the exact letter of the law here. And so that would be a massive job for them to be posting every single instance of any possible training that included race, sex, gender, religion, the national origin, I'm sorry, the entire list. And I think that's what the problem is. It's not the fact, not of being transparent with parents, but the extent of effort. This would certainly require districts to hire new people just to do all this work putting up this stuff on. I appreciate your response. I just it sounds like we agree on transparency. There's I just wondered if you'd have a way to be able to balance because I do think parents should know. I mean, I would, I think one way out would be to say that parents, that the districts have to make sure that all of the teaching and training that they do on any topic is transparent for parents. And and to you know, there are many school corporations have processes and procedures for parent involvement and parent transparency. You know, for you know, and and it's be very possible for a district to have a special task force that says how do we increase transparency? How do we make sure that those parents who want more information have access to that information? I can't I'm not going to stand up here and say that school corporations always do a good job with transparency because we know that's not the case. But I don't know that we fix that by requiring something that makes districts go do something that is just about impossible for them to do rather than to use already existing methods they have at their disposal to make sure that happens. Paul? Thank you, Madam Chair. What was your last name again? Skiba. Skiba, Mr. Skiba. So as it pertains to the school districts and employment in particular, there are certain districts that are up in my area, where you have school populations that are predominantly African American. But you have a teacher base that is consistently white women. And you have school districts that are having issues with the teachers being able to relate to, understand the children. And it seems as if that there's a need or a push to hire kids that represent the teachers that represent the school population in order to be able to build relationships, to have representation, to understand cultural differences, things of that nature. Under this bill, that would strictly be prohibited, would that not? Yeah, it would be difficult to recruit teachers of various backgrounds. It would also chill. I think this is another chilling aspect for this is that it would chill folks coming to Indiana and coming into our schools and our institutions of higher education, because they're seeing this kind of thing in place, realizing that they would be under some risk of teaching about race, ethnicity, gender. And we're seeing that already at universities. There are many of my colleagues have said during searches that are being conducted, people are just saying I can't come to Indiana if these kind of bills are being passed there. I'll have to so we're already losing some of the best and brightest by having these bills. So and I mean I don't want you to have to talk out of place if it's not necessarily something that you're specifically educated on. But I mean, as it pertains to the current need in public education or just in public level the, you know, elementary and and secondary education, the need for, educators that come from minority backgrounds? I mean, do you do you see that this is an issue consistently where there is a need for more of these individuals? Well, this is actually an issue that the legislature has been working on for the last few years is trying to have methods for increasing the diversity of our teaching force. And to tell teachers coming in, well, you can't talk about things that are that come from your own heritage, your own background, the principles of civil rights that you may have been exposed to and have thought about and wish to teach about. You can't do that here in Indiana. It's certainly going to have a chilling effect on who we can. Well, and not just education. I mean, would you agree that there's also efforts by the legislature to endorse or promote MBEs, WBEs, women based women owned Let's just talk about this bill center poll. Okay. But I can go back to that to this bill though, because it does extend even to police and fire department boundaries. And so if we think about I know in Bloomington, and I'm sure in many, many other police departments across the state, getting a diverse police force is extremely important. And if there are limits placed on what police departments can do or talk about, that's going to impact even our police and fire departments. Senator Chang? Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. Mr. Skiba, can you how how long have you been a professor? I was at IU for 31 years. Okay. And you taught diversity? I did. I taught diversity classes, and my research was in the Forgive me for being a lawyer. I'm trying to true up your Yeah. Okay. So I can give you credibility. Got it. I wanna go to page 2 of the bill because it you may be talking about the other bill that's coming up in some of your testimony. Mhmm. But all this does is require the way I look at it for the schools to post their information. The language that I see here. Am I correct? Yes. Okay. So it requires them to post about nondiscrimination. Do you have a problem with that? It requires them to post any instruction or any materials or any trainings that they do about a whole range. Okay. But do you have a problem with them posting nondiscrimination? No. I guess my answer would be the same as it was to Senator Roscoe, that it's not the principle that's an issue. It's the way it's being done that's an issue. Do you have a problem with them posting about diversity in the classroom? No. Okay. So what is diversity? Well, that's really interesting. I'm glad you brought that up again because I wanted to talk about the earlier question about when we if you don't mind. No, I don't mind at all. Diversity, equity and inclusion are not a curriculum. They are values. And when they where they come from, you could trace them back to the 14th Amendment in what, 18/66. You could trace equity back to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that first enshrined equal educational opportunities. So these you could trace inclusion back to the special education disability movement of the late '80s early '90s when that term was first introduced. So these go these terms go way back. Yeah. So diversity would mean could mean people with glasses and people without glasses. Yeah. Diversity could mean heavyset people, skinny people. Mhmm. It could mean an elephant and a giraffe. Right? Mhmm. Mhmm. Okay. So now that we have to post these materials that we're teaching and give the people Why is that bad to post that on the website? Well, it isn't bad. But I think when we're talking about in the course of a day, in the course of a lesson, I might touch on issues of race or sex, or national origin. And who knows how many times in a day any teacher could come across those things. So that every single time that comes up, I've got to be worried. My gosh, is this something that I would need to post? And the school district, the school corporation needs to be especially careful because they're the ones that would be liable for these complaints. And so they would tend to be very, very cautious. Okay. So making sure that was all out there. So it becomes a really massive job to Okay. Get all that out there. All right. So there's no no problem with posting it. But here's the problem that I have. It provides that the school corporation or political supervision or employee of the school corporation, charter school, state agency, or political subdivision may not in the course of their public service or employment promote, embrace, or endorse stereotypes. Stereotypes. Yeah. I'm a little I'm a little confused by that. It's it is it's it is confusing. Is that broad? Yeah. You know So if you have a stereotype that that that, you know, bald people sweat a lot, you can't promote that. I mean, we we here's the way I look at this. We all have stereotypes. And the work that we did in working with school districts around the state, and I'd have to say we were pretty successful in that. What it meant was that we had to get stuff out on the table. We had conversations. And so folks would sometimes put out stereotypes that would make them go, oh, But we had a safe space that we could explore that. Professor, I've worked with you on this. You've worked with me. I know that exactly. I'm trying to speed you up because I know I'll go get cut off in a minute. Okay. The point is the the the point is stereotypes are how we get at the issues that exist in society. Right? They're a way People have thought for us. About what they believe somebody might be. And diversity, in my opinion, and I believe in your opinion on all the the things that you've written, diversity helps cure those stereotypes. For example, people of different races coming together. And that's what diversity is, right? So what is bad about that? Well, you know, and I think what the issue here is that not only I mean, it's not like we can all wave a magic wand and say we are going to accept all people and take away all stereotypes and it's going to happen. It requires work. We are not used to that the acceptance of a diverse society where everyone has equal opportunity. And so it requires tough conversations. And what this bill would do would be to short circuit those and say So we would no longer have to have those conversations, be allowed to have those conversations in school? It would be difficult because the school district would say, yeah, we gotta be careful because we don't wanna embrace stereotype. So we better not talk about it. It would have it has a severely chilling effect. All right. Next, we have Mr. Blakely, Mr. Daly and then Mr. Russell. Good afternoon, members of this committee. My name is Jorell Blakely and I have the pleasure of serving as the director of government, community and racial and social justice for the Indiana State Teachers Association. I had a phone with a litany of materials on it that would guide my testimony. It died, you know, so I am going to so I am going to do my best to, touch on many points of this bill. I had the opportunity to meet with Senator Byrne from Burnville to discuss this bill. And I wanna thank him for the amendment that he offered to address some of the concerns that we had as an organization. Thank you so much, Chaka. I do want to talk about just a general discussion around D, E, and I because I think there are some misunderstandings about that term. Senator Buck asked a question that is very, very legitimate and I would like to take some time to answer his inquiry. As we know, DE and I has been pillaged in the press around the country as something that is negative and is something that has negative implications. DE and I is merely an attempt to promote fairness and nondiscrimination in a history that once had discrimination and bias instilled in its institutions and in its laws. The people who are standing about this bill and speaking about this bill, the NAACP, the Urban League, we know and we support government actions to stop discrimination and make sure that we are focusing on fairness. I would ask and implore the members of this committee to meet with folks who represent institutions that have been against discrimination, that are created to ensure that discrimination is not a thing. I think what happens is, you know, this is not burning books, but I will say that it's burning words. And it's playing into a national attack on D, E, and I. We are in a statehouse that was once governed exclusively almost by the Ku Klux Klan. They ran this state in the 1920s. D, E, and I came in the aftermath of civil rights legislation and a changing of this country to ensure that fairness, that diversity, equity, and Inclusion were hallmark principles to ensure that our country did not revert into policies that led to terrible things in this country including a state legislature that was controlled by the Ku Klux Klan. I think what's happening is folks are attempting to equate D, E, and I with discrimination. And in fact, DE and I is created to ensure that we have a nondiscriminatory policy. Much of my work at ISTA is based on ensuring that our policies and practices are fair and that they promote diversity, equity, and inclusion. This legislature is a better legislature because this is a diverse judiciary committee, because it is an equitable judiciary committee and that it has an inclusive, priorities. And so I just really want to share, that these are really conversations that I think we can have. I believe that Senator Berne is a fair minded person. I don't think he is discriminatory. But I think that this national attack on DNI makes advocates of civil rights and civil justice scared because it's demonizing a policy instead of practices that are created to address the historical injustices that we know exist in this country. So I'm happy to answer any questions. I don't have my notes in front of me, so I had to give that from the heart. But I just really want to share, DEI is not meant to discriminate and I think what's happening with this legislation is that it's demonizing DEI when we should be having a conversation about how we can ensure that the policies of this legislature are leading to diverse fields. It's very fascinating, and I'll wrap up. It's very fascinating. This legislature, I believe the majority of the Republicans in this and the majority of the Democrats, they supported the Bill Crawford scholarship in this state that led to scholarships dealing to increase the number of African American teachers in this state. I don't have the bill list in front of me, but I believe many of the folks here understood that that was a legitimate public policy priority of the state to have classrooms that reflect the diversity of the Hoosier state. I don't know how in one session you can support legislation dealing with increasing the numbers of teachers and in the next session seek to enact policies to destroy diversity, equity, and inclusion. Again, I'm happy to answer any questions and I thank, the senator the chairwoman for her time. Thank you. Any questions? Senator Buck. Well, to answer my own question, it's amazing what you can find on Yeah. Deep. On the phone. The, embryo, if you will, of DEI was 1965 by Lyndon Baines Johnson had, executive order. It wasn't legislation. It was an executive order 11/20/46. Then you can go through here and see the evolution that eventually became the acronym for D, E, and I. And so it's quite an interesting read, but thank you for your comment. I would say, senator Buck, just to your point, senator Johnson actually gave a speech. He gave the commencement address in my alma mater, Howard University, where he talked about the importance of this country's history and figuring out what we were gonna do as a country to integrate African Americans into the mainstream. And so, I'm happy to have a conversation about that. And I appreciate your question because many people, use these terms, D, E, and I, and they don't know. They use words like CRT and they don't know that either, but they get their talking points from media outlets, that, you know, are sort of demonizing these words that are really deeply committed to the most basic fundamentally American principles of all, fairness, justice, and nondiscrimination. Do we have any other questions? Senator Pol. Thank you, Madam Chair. So in kind of looking at these situation, you seem to have been studying this farther than just this legislation. You've been obviously looking at this, what you were stating is kind of a tax on the concept elsewhere. In your review, you know, has there been any data point or anything that's been brought to your attention that's made you say, okay, well, I can understand this being an issue and we could work on that to fix that. Or, you know, from your standpoint, is this something that, you know, you believe is simply a, you know, the way that you, you know, the way that you, you know, the way that you would, characterize it was a demonizing of the concept as just as a talking point. Well, I think in many ways, it's been used as a a cudgel in the sort of culture wars. I think, you know, the the bill seeks to do some, I believe, good things, right? We wanna make sure that we are not demonizing students. We're not demonizing educators. I think that is very, very admirable. And, you know, I understand why on its face, nondiscrimination acts or having policies that are nondiscriminatory are important. But I think what's happened when you look at the letter of the law as proposed, you'll see that in this bill, it singles out nondiscrimination trainings in a bill that purports to be nondiscriminational. And so I think that that sort of using those words, right, all of those words that are outlined have been buzzwords in the D, E, and I movement. And so that's why there are some people, particularly people you know, when you start talking about the NAACP and the Urban League, they were created at a time when their je ne sais quoi was nondiscrimination. And so now we're at a point where these words are used as buzzwords to to describe a movement and to demonize a movement. And that's something that you can flip on Fox News and other news outlets to see how D, E, and I has been demonized. And again, I think it's because it's a misunderstanding of the phrase. We are attempting to appeal to the bedrock principles of American democracy and this republic. And I think that attack, when you start looking at those buzzwords, it turns into something that's a part of the culture war. And I wanna also reiterate, if you don't mind, Senator Poole. Just really briefly because I wanna make sure we get back to the bill. Thank you. Go ahead. Yeah. I would just say, you know, I believe that we can sit down with Senator Burn, advocates of nondiscrimination. I believe that Senator Byrne intentions are correct. I had a conversation with him. But I think if we're able to sit at the table and figure this out, remove the buzzwords, remove the national debates, but make sure that we're able to sit together as Hoosiers. You know, Senator Byrne made a point this morning where he said that we're all Americans. And I agree, we're all Americans. Let's sit at the table and figure out how we can have a civil dialogue around issues that we all care about. So to, with all due respect to the chair, my question to you about the bill, you said you've worked on it. You know, what are the most problematic provisions that are still in the bill to your in your opinion? Well, I think what happens is when you're isolating these terms because the terms are being isolated as highlighted as like negative or somehow problematic approaches. And then you're saying that these have to be posted. I think the posting, but I think what I would rather do, I don't wanna litigate the concerns of the problems. I wanna give Senator Byrne an opportunity to meet with stakeholders. I'm committed he met with us this morning. We appreciate him meeting with us. Again, I believe he's a honorable, thoughtful person, and we share his commitment to nondiscrimination. However, we wanna make sure that the bill is intending. You will have no greater friend than the 40000 members of the Indiana State Teachers Association around nondiscrimination in education. However, we want to make sure that we are ensuring that this is a conversation that is not leading to stifling conversations about very important concepts that are basic to American, American, you know, sort of learning and education. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Alright. Thank you very much. Thank you. Alright. Gonna remind everyone, so I have another bill. We have twice as many people to testify in the next one. And most of you have already testified or the same people. So just a second, Mr. Daley. We have Mr. Daley, Mr. Russell, Ms. Frasier Burgess, and Ms. Wildhack Noland. Thank you so much, Madam Chair, members of the committee. Chris Daley with the ACLU of Indiana. I will just be brief on this bill. Appreciate that the private right of action was pulled out. The ACLU of Indiana nonetheless regrettably objects to this bill and asks you to respectfully vote no on it. Again, I think this is very similar to other bills that we've seen come up, in front of general assembly committees. School districts around the state have the ability to take action on this already, can be doing this already. This is a mandate on school districts. Some of whom do not believe that this is helpful in their communities to do this. And I think that we just need to be conscious of if there's a real problem we're trying to solve, we still have not seen the evidence of that problem. And if we're going to mandate the school districts around the state as well as state agencies and, higher ed take actions, that we really do need more evidence for that. The one thing I wanted to point out, this really is about more than just posting. If you look on page four of the bill under, that near the top subsection C, it prohibits requiring a teacher, student, or administrator to, attend certain trainings. And then under the things that are, not prohibited, a little bit below that, it does say that there can be discussions, but that the school district is, disallowed from taking a position on that. So, some of the numbering here is a little bit unclear. There may be some typos in the bill, but to the degree to which these both apply to that set of categories above that we're posting on the website, Nondiscrimination, diversity, bias. I don't think any of you want school districts to be neutral on any of those topics. And yet, this bill seems to imply that that would be the case. So, for those reasons, we do respectfully ask you to vote no. Thank you very much, Mr. Daley. Any questions? Senator Paul. Thank you, madam chair. Could you explain that last point when you're saying that you wouldn't want you wouldn't want the the legislature would not want, school districts to be neutral on those particular topics. You said bias. What were the other ones? Non discrimination. Non discrimination. I mean, just from a, legal responsibility, we can't have our school districts be neutral on nondiscrimination, right? All employers in the state have an obligation to promote nondiscrimination for their employees and for the services they provide. So I think, again, this bill goes much further than just requiring things to be posted on websites. It really does try to take some action that we think probably is not in line with what you all believe. So give me an example of that. Like what what's an instance in which the, you know, something would come up in the school district where you, you know, you would believe that the majority of the people out there would say, hey, you know, we can't be we can't be non know, neutral on this. I mean, could you provide an example? Sure. Senator Taylor gave those examples earlier. The civil rights movement, MLK, the holocaust. This bill would require it allows you to teach those things, right, because they're in that that list, but it says, as a school, we're neutral on those things. Right? That's not the position that any of you share. So I think that's the section of the bill that is really concerning and I think goes beyond the perception that this is about just sharing out what trainings are. So currently, like, if you had a if you had a classroom discussion and you had, you know, somebody that was promoting, you know, you know, you they they were promoting, you know, being, you know, part of organizations that have been tied to, you know, whatever, you know, pick pick, you know, one of the isms, racism, sex sexism, whatever. In that situation, this your your understanding of the bill is that this the teacher would have to just essentially be not neutral to the discussion in general? It it says you have to say that the school district's position is neutrality. Okay. So if somebody said, hey. You know, we should be Sexism is bad. No. The school district believes we're neutral on sexism. Anti discrimination is bad. No. The school district believes So if somebody said, you know, hey, you know, I want to be able to discuss, you know, the benefits of joining the Ku Klux Klan, the school's district would essentially have to say, well, we have to be neutral about this. That's essentially what what the bill would do. To this degree, that's a discussion of race. Absolutely. Okay. Bob. Alright. Thank you very much. Thank you, madam chair. Alright. So we have mister Russell. So I'm giving you your name. So yes, thank you, Mr. Russell. So you're ready to go. Ms. Fraser Bergus and Ms. Wildhackle. All right, ma'am. Thank you, Madam Chair and Committee members. The Indianapolis Urban League rises in opposition to Senate Bill two eighty nine. This really comes down to some basic realities. Civil rights is the law. It cannot be wished away. It cannot be masked. It cannot be declared dead under legislative mandates on steroids. The Urban League finds it interesting that there are no legislative initiatives concerning how math is taught. This subject stands out because of its racial implications. It is also buried, or I should say equipped, it must travel through this body under false pretenses of transparency and accountability. It masks the strongly perceived intent of this bill to obviate history, current and past, especially in regard to the hard realities of racial disparities in our local communities, state, and nation. You cannot wish away civil rights, especially at a time when we live in a digital environment that communicates and distorts reality. I do not see a clamor from this legislative body directing school districts on geography. We don't have a concern about math. We don't have a concern about other subjects. When it comes down to it, it's really a black and white issue. What are you looking at? What is the legislature's intent in regard to legislative oversight of education? We don't support this bill and would strongly encourage that you look at it and what motivates its being. We'll be here. The civil rights movement culminated in several federal legislation that protects women, that protects minorities, that protects disabled people? Where and why is this focus and hypersensitivity on racial equality. Thank you. Any questions? All right. Good afternoon, madam chair and committee members. I am Doctor. Sharon Fraser Burgess, professor emeritus of multicultural education and social foundations of education. I am here on behalf of the Indiana Coalition for Public Education, ICPE, and I rise to express opposition to, Senate Bill two eighty nine. ICPE is a nonpartisan and nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving and improving public education. Our goal is high quality, equitable, well funded public school for all children. Senate Bill two eighty nine applies directly to the organization's priority of ensuring K through 12 schools receiving public funds should teach historically and scientifically accurate curricula in order to prepare students for careers and to be good citizens in a democracy. We support inclusive curricula as well as local over educational materials and reject that there must be a choice. Our objections to the bill are the following. Laws should be based on true claims about a field of instruction as defined by the practitioners and scholars. Correct? Rather than the anecdotal experiences or opinions of participants or other parties, parts of this bill are are just not an accurate representation of diversity, equity equity and inclusion curricula as, as a form of instruction and the best practices it supports. And I'd be happy to point out where that is the case. The bill on this point is crafted too broadly in a way that undermines the benefits of diversity, equity, and inclusion, as a professional development for preparing teachers and equipping them to teach in a multicultural, multiracial, and multiethnic environment, and also to prepare learners who can live and work in a diverse society. It undermines the democratic principles and educational ethics on which the notion of diversity, equity, and inclusion are based and is in its report mechanism, promotes a kind of surveillance culture, based on the subjective interpretation of its educational aims. Therefore, it creates a culture of fear and suspicion in schools and other agencies and, you know, promotes this notion that one is entitled to grievance based on, these considerations. It may stand for free, open, and honest debate, about academic issues simply by someone feeling offended. It may potentially put more people under civil suits. I know that's been, eliminated based on the amendment. It seeks to whitewash negative points in U. S. History, just as the former anti CRT bill did. We pride ourselves on being a nation in the moral tradition of Abrahamic faiths. And in fact, this bill, undermines the word equity by placing it under some sort of stigma. The word equity appears in the Bible 22 times. The founding fathers grappled with the many, the meaning and significance of race. So how will we understand our history without these interpretive terms? Our nation's motto is e pluribus unum, out of many, one people. How can we talk about our nation's history without diversity? So villainizing these words, placing them under scrutiny, hampers our capacity to talk about who we are as a nation. We want to ensure that students learn that despite our differences, viewpoints, race and ethnicities, and even backgrounds, we can come together around these differences to create a pluralism that is our strength. Thank you for your time. Thank you very much for your testimony. Any questions? All right. Thank you. Nolan? And then we have Kathy Mars on deck. Okay. Alright. Well, I will say if everyone had stuck to the two minutes, you might have had an opportunity to testify. So go ahead. Madam chair, is it am I able to speak to both bills, two thirty five and this bill, or should I just stick with this one? Okay. So everything they said, I am also in opposition of this bill, and I think people have spoken really beautifully to the experience of educators, the research, the ethical and historical context to which this bill is problematic. What I wanna speak to is my heart. I am a mom, a parent of a school age child. I am a student who grew up in Indiana going to our schools, and I am an equity facilitator. I do the workshops that could be restricted, and underfunded or eliminated through through the work of this this bill and the next. And to me, what I fear is for our children. I'm here today because this is amazing. Look at us in this democracy. Each of us having a voice. This is the equitable practices that we are trying to preserve and promote in DE and I. We live in a diverse state. Our state is growing. There is amazing culture in our state. If we do not prepare our children to connect with each other, to build relationships, to love one another, to be neighbors, and to problem solve together, then we will continue to see the violence that we're seeing today, the stress, the suicide rates. Our children, some of them are coming to school and because their identities are different, they don't feel seen, They don't feel heard. They are killing themselves because they are LGBTQ, because they are children of color. They are in fear. Because they speak a different language and they are not the resources for them. And sometimes their educators are not prepared and they don't know how to take this on. It is vitally important not only that we have diversity, equity, inclusion work in our schools, but there are still plenty of funding, plenty of supports from internal and outside organizations to help support our educators in doing this work well. The work, as everyone has said, is there to eliminate stereotypes, to eliminate, the the horrible problems of what is the d word? Help me out. Discrimination in all different sorts. That is what DEI work is for, and if we don't do it well, and if we don't do it at all, and if we're afraid and teachers are too afraid to do this work, which is what I'm seeing, they are afraid to put themselves out there because they care about their children. And so I just ask you from my heart to consider revamping to to moving equity work forward and not continually creating bills that get in its way, because it will continually be something that we need in our multicultural pluralistic society. Thank you. Thank you. Any other question or any questions? Thank you. It is wild heck no one. Okay. So we have two people then left to testify. We have Eric Rasmussen. Did you get that right? Okay. And then I think we only have one person left. Let me wait because when we're done, we're gonna be done. Killeen Lindgren, please. Thank you, madam chair, members of the committee. I'll keep this very short. I won't won't, give you my Pacific Legal Foundation speech since I've already been up here, but I will say the reason I'm speaking on this bill is that we do also litigate in the equality under the law space. We've litigated 50 cases on this issue in just the last two years. So, I just want to address a couple things that have come up on a practical note. If you look on page four, starting at line 19 through page five, ending at line seven, I believe that language very explicitly states that not that not only are we not trying to prevent people from speaking about important issues, historical facts, things like the Holocaust or type teaching about doctor King, but we're promoting it. We're not stopping free speech, and, we're creating transparency and also looking forward in this bill to ensure that nobody in the state is receiving inappropriate preference or discrimination by the government. So I know there are a lot of differing views on what this language says, but that's how that's how that's our read of it. I wouldn't be standing here if we didn't believe that. To another point, I think this is advocacy for fairness and civil rights at its core. So what we're doing what this bill is trying to do for Indiana is picking up what started in 1868 with the fourteenth amendment. And, I think it's a a laudable goal. The fourteenth amendment guarantees equal protection of the laws of The United States to all citizens. And, it was mentioned earlier today, students for fair admissions case that was decided in 2023 in front of the Supreme Court. And, it was, where institutions of higher education were told that they cannot discriminate based on immutable characteristics like race or sex or anything else that's immutable. And, in his in his, just, concurrence with that decision, justice Thomas said, address the issue that not only did the fourteenth amendment address the atrocious treatment of former slaves following the civil war, it looked forward to protect all people. He wrote that in the wake of the civil war, the country focused its attention on restoring the union and establishing the legal status of newly freed slaves. The constitution was amended to abolish slavery and proclaim that all persons born in The United States are citizens entitled to the privileges or immunities of citizenship and equal protection of the laws. SB two eighty nine promotes equality by ensuring this principle is affirmed in Indiana law. Nine states have already embraced similar reforms in the past few decades as Senator Byrne mentioned, and others are currently considering them. And, even more have implemented first steps addressing, discrepancies and and preferences on things, like racial quotas for for appointments to boards and other state institutions. So, with that, I will wrap up, but I'm happy to answer any questions. Thank you very much. Any questions? Senator Paul? So you had focused on the idea that there was free speech and that was being promoted under the terms of this bill. So if you had a student that was presenting in a classroom in a, you know, public education classroom or a charter school, whatever. And you had they had essentially did their presentation on the benefits of joining the Ku Klux Klan and the benefits of a racist ideology. And And you had a lot of parents that were upset by that. Essentially, under the bill, I mean, would you agree that the school would have to essentially state, well, we're neutral on the position that we cannot state that this is a, you know, that this is something that we promote nor do we condone it or anything like that? I mean, wouldn't that essentially be the position that would have to be taken under this under this bill? I think that that that's the position that should be taken with with any specific issue. I think we're conflating in a lot of this conversation talking about certain facts and then also the fact that schools are government entities. So we're we're we are talking about we're sharing facts versus enforcing ideology. So if schools are government entities, the the issues in that situation is that the school is the one that can't be approving or denying. I I'm not sure that you that it would be appropriate for them to discourage a student from presenting. I think if it I think, that might be a slightly different the outcome or consequences for that student might be slightly different than what we're talking about here today. But the school can't take the school couldn't promote that position. Now if it turned into a dangerous situation or something was becoming inflammatory and disruptive, then I think that turns into an actual harm to students around you, and and then the the school could intervene to corral a conversation. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. What was what my question was is whether or not they could take a position on it. You know? So you're stating that you don't believe that the school should take a position on Nazism or racism or anything like that. They can't essentially say, hey, you know what? This is bad. We should include everybody, and everybody should be treated equally. No. I think that I think that they can say these things aren't bad. What they can't do is is give preferences or deny opportunities to people based on actively on immutable characteristics. So what we're talking about here is a presentation on something that's both historic and also could be a student's true ideology. But that isn't the school proclaiming that this is what the school believes is a good thing. No. But what is essentially the the the response that the parents that were upset by this, right, that they would have to get from the school is that we are neutral on the position that's been taken. Correct? Only a position being taken by a student. Correct. So they they Yeah. You know Yeah. This would provide This bill but this bill this bill addresses accountability for the government actors in this space taking positions. Students are private individuals. Correct. So, again, you what you would have, though, is you would have a situation in which a a platform has been provided. And you have a student that is essentially able to, you know, approach the classroom and talk about an ideology and maybe some one in which that it affects the kids that are, you know, some of the kids that are in this in the classroom. And you have parents that are upset that this affects them. Or maybe that they're not even part of the class that's even protected that is being discussed. For example, you could have a, you know, a situation in which, you know, you're you're talking about your ideology and you're offending individuals that, you know, from a Jewish background, from a, you know, from African American, Latino, anything like that. And you have parents that are upset about it. Now they're going to demand answers from the school district, are they not? I mean, they're gonna be upset, right? That they that their kids sent to a class. What he or she believes? Correct. So the the the you have an individual that's that's going on about this at, you know, in the classroom. And essentially, you're saying that this promotes this bill promotes free speech. And that essentially the the the teacher wouldn't be able to say, hey, you can't discuss this because we have to remain neutral about it. And the the response to when those kids go home and tell their parents is essentially, oh, well, sorry. We have to we had to remain neutral in this situation because of free speech. And because we have to you know, essentially, because of this new bill, we had to allow this to continue. I think there's a difference between something that's proactively attacking people and something that's sharing information, whether it's your personal subjective belief or whether it's an objective fact about something that happened to our group. That's different than something that is actually retaliatory or or aggressive towards people specifically in that room. If that was happening, if if a student was criticizing others or going after them, that would be a different situation. That would that that's not what we're talking about. But it doesn't have to be it doesn't have to be a personal attack. It doesn't have to it doesn't have to say, oh, well, because this person is because part of this protected class, these are the stereotypes that apply to them. It could essentially be like, well, I belong to this organization and we believe that this protected class in general, you know, this is my ideology. This is my free speech to to express in the classroom essentially under this bill that I would be able to because it's not attacking those individuals. I'm just saying this is what I believe. So, I mean, again, the way that we're writing this bill is essentially providing for that, is it not? Yes. Though that isn't the issue that this bill is is really about. The issue is It doesn't matter what it's about. Positions being taken or denied by the government actors. Okay. Not just about private citizens. Let let me just I think the question then is today, if a student in the classroom says, just in a history class says, I believe that pick a horrible dictator, massacred people, pick a pick a century, pick a war, and said, I I agree with them. I thought they were great. Does the does the student have the right to say that today? Do they have the first amendment right to say that? Assuming it's not disruptive, they're not violent, they're not threatening, they just sit there, you know? I believe they do. Yeah. Okay. So this doesn't change that. Doesn't change that. But I'm I'm not talking about their agreement with a, you know, Mussolini or Hitler or anything like that. I'm talking about if I get to, you know, as an individual, get to express their feelings, their particular feelings about groups of people, which you're saying right now, it would be totally allowed and the teacher could not stop them from saying, hey, you know, I don't like this group of people and this is my gonna be my presentation about this. They couldn't they could they or could they not stop them right now? Under the current law, I'm not sure what exactly on the education side would be required in each district. I think on a broader principle that as long as somebody under under just the plain broad principle of free speech, as long as the student is, working within the confines of the structure, say if they're giving a presentation that they've been asked to give in a classroom, then they are allowed to to speak their mind respectfully, even if it's not something that most people just would agree with. But again, we're talking about government actors in this bill and how they can treat people. Exactly. And how they would respond and how they would be able to control their classroom, right? I think though well, I think we're we're slightly drifting from the principle here. But, I understand that there's the principle of the bill and there's the intent of the bill, but there's the actual what the bill does is my concern. I don't I do not believe that and senator Byrne may have be able to expound upon this, you know, in his closing remarks, but I don't believe that this bill prevents a teacher from intervening in any situation where anybody is being attacked, where anybody is being proactively made to feel uncomfortable. And I think what it does so if you're talking about controlling the classroom, I assume you're talking about a situation where things are getting out of hand. Well, that's a different thing than somebody just speaking. So if somebody speaks about something that someone doesn't like, I think it's a really dangerous path to go down, both legally but just in principle. That's a very dangerous path to go down. If somebody is sharing an idea respectfully and within the confines of what has been set up in that classroom, I I don't think that I think, you know, this what this bill does is just say that we're dealing with a system that's already an educational system that already exists. Right? So we're not debating that. Yep. But I think under this bill, what we're talking about is just purely that if that happens, if it happens within the prescribed format in a safe, you know, safe way exchange of ideas, then that is protect that that speech is protected by the First Amendment in this end. But the teacher is not prohibited from intervening if things do get out of hand, if if things become aggressive between students. But I don't think we can prevent students from having dialogue. Okay. I'm gonna move on because I think that, you know, I I don't think we're reading this the same, and I think that that's a very concerning part of this bill. As it pertains to the school districts, you know, earlier, I don't know if you were here when I had asked the question about, you know, hiring practices. For example, do you have a predominantly African American or predominantly Latino population, but you have only white women that are, that are currently teaching. And a school district is having a hard time being able to figure out, you know, we need teachers to be able to relate. And the best way to do so would likely be to find individuals that represent those communities to connect, to understand cultural differences, to understand, you know, essentially Senator, So under the bill, those the idea that a teacher or that the school district would go would be able to hire or, you know, promote or try to figure out ways to bring in teachers that are that would represent those student bodies. That this would be prohibited from now on. Would that not? Yes. Because anything that is judging people purely based on an immutable characteristic, you're making a judgment about the students in that statement, and you're also making a judgment about the teachers. And, at the end of the day, this is about individuals. And I think it's, really it's it's I I just don't know how we can value the individual when we're lumping people into categories. So you're saying that in that situation, the school district would just have to continuously hire individual, you know, the only applicants that are your best of the best applicants that would be only it. They wouldn't be able to take into account the fact that there are these attributes, you know, these attributes that people do relate in a different way to individuals, that they see themselves and that they represent that they feel that represented by. They would not be able to address that. Yes. Because it isn't the interest of the state to make assumptions about groups of individuals. This is this is what this bill is trying to address. These are individuals. These aren't But it is Is it not the the interest of the state to ensure that kids get a quality education and in doing so that they're able to relate to the people that are teaching them? Okay. I I think that's a little bit of far field from our expertise. Do you have another question center poll? No. Thank you. Thank you. There is no one else signed up to testify. Senator Byrne, you may close and then we will have discussion. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. I'm not sure I was reading if everybody read the bill that I was presenting because just this last argument on this is the case. I'm not sure if you're interested in the discussion. I'm not sure if you're interested in the you know, it may not prohibit how stereotypes have been or are wrongfully embraced or used to discriminate on the basis of race, sex, ethnicity, religion, or nation of origin. It allows them to have those conversations. We want teachers to teach about Martin Luther King. We want teachers to teach about how slavery was wrong. This bill does not prevent any of those things from happening. This bill will stop three specific concepts that lead to discrimination. Schools and government agencies can't advocate for that one group is better or worse than another group. Schools and agencies can't advocate that individuals today should be blamed for what was done in the past. Schools and agencies can't advocate that a person's traits determine their moral character. I hear, some things that that's really, I'm gonna say, I'm not sure everybody read the bill. So from that point, you know, I would be glad to try to answer any questions, but, or leave it up to the chair to decide what to do from here. Alright. Well, I actually gave everyone the opportunity to ask questions when you first spoke, but I'm gonna get allow one question each and then we're gonna have discussion. Senator Taylor, you have a question? I didn't hear you. Ask away, Senator Taylor. All right. Thank you. Because I thought you said we got a chance to ask him questions earlier, But I didn't get yeah, I didn't get to ask them questions earlier. You made a statement about things in the past not being blamed on people in the present. Can you elaborate on that? It just says that that shouldn't be allowed. So let me In this statute. In the school. Is that in the bill? Let's go to, section one. Alright. A, B, C. Section one? Chapter 22, the nondiscrimination for in education. Where's You go down there, there's a there's a 18. Thank you. Yeah. But my mine's different. I got I don't wanna No. No. You have the engrossed. Okay. WHERE DID AGAIN, WHERE DID I DON'T SEE THAT STATEMENT. Maybe This is the goal of the bill. You're telling me I prefer the actions committed in the past by other members of the same race. So let me ask you a question. Sure. Are you saying that we're teaching children, or did you have a concern that we're teaching children in K through 12 education that If you're white and your grandparent was a slave owner that you are somehow responsible for that I'm not saying everybody's doing that. No, I didn't say I didn't say everybody's anybody doing that Do you believe they are? No. Okay. Then this doesn't affect anybody. Well, you wrote the bill. I'm asking you you're addressing the Senator Burns, I I don't I don't like do it. I just why I wish we could have met before you you put you put this bill forward. I don't like doing this in a public thing because it makes it seems like we're an I'm really curious. What makes you concerned that somebody is teaching children that the the debts of their ancestors are should be paid by them. So Indiana schools that are teaching this concept on the attorney general's website, there is a place that they can go and report these questionable materials that's being used or being taught in the school. And it's one and I can't tell you that all these I see what you're saying. All these, complaints, you know. Okay. So let me ask you a question then. I think I understand what you're saying. You're saying that people if we talk, for example, that because the Tuskegee experiment exists you know what Tuskegee is? Nope. You're out there. Okay. Let me elaborate on that. The Tuskegee was an experiment where they wanted to figure out how to treat syphilis. So a hospital in Louisiana and in Mississippi gathered up a group of black males, gave all of them syphilis, treated some, and then gave others placebos. And in other words, that trial that that clinical trial, you had to let some people die. These were black men. Okay? Now one of those black men happened to be my dad's uncle. He died. And if we were to teach that the reason why black people don't participate in clinical trials with drugs today is because of the Tuskegee experiment, would that be Unlawful in this situation. I don't see it that way. No. I do not. Okay. The bill says Okay. So I read that. Well, you said you said you said members of the same race are responsible for what somebody else did years ago. I think I'm assuming you're talking about slavery, but I just brought another example up. I Don't know what race Did that you know, but it was it was white people well, and that's wrong either way I understand I agree with you a %. That's evil, but I'm not saying evil or not. It was done. Oh, it's evil. It was done. And all I'm saying to you is is in these situations where we know things like this, would it be illegal for schools to teach about the Tuskegee experiment? I say not. They can teach it. Are you sure? Yes. It says may may not prohibit discussion. Continue reading. There's there's they may be able to This is not scientific. This is this is there's no data or scientific. You're able to teach history. Alright. So if you could say in classes now that the remnants of slavery still exist in society today, would that be illegal? If it's your opinion and and it it it could be true and it may be true because it does in certain countries. And and if you look at things that's going across our border today, I consider sex trafficking slavery. Work trap yeah. Yeah. I would say that that's that's true, and you could say it and and have the debate. Okay. We'll encourage that. Okay. So, senator, Byrne, then why do we need this bill? Well, this bill is about the transparency and ending discrimination. Transparency. Transparency and ending discrimination. In our public agencies and in our schools and ending discrimination. In our public education education and our political subdivisions. Yes. It's I just wish, senator Byrne, you could bring me, and maybe we'll have time to talk about this later, if you could bring me some examples where a political subdivision is discriminating and not being sought after. I I I hear what you're saying. Oh, and then the last question. You said that sex is the same things as gender, right? Well, I have sex in the bill. I didn't see necessary to have gender. Well, why is that? It's the same. But I could tell you sex is not the same either from a philosophical or a medical standpoint. I mean, doctor Johnson is gonna be up here next. Yeah. We're not gonna talk about that issue now. That's not Well, it's part of the bill, senator. Yeah. He said sex is the same thing as gender. Male. Gender is not gender is not in this bill. And you said that gender is the same thing as sex. Am I correct? In my mind, in in in the code, it is the same in most places in code. Now if you're talking, so say gender ideology, it doesn't mean the same as male and female, but there's depends on how you're using the word. In this bill, sex is male and female. I I don't know how we could do that, but there's no way sex could be the same thing as gender. If you wanna use senator, unfortunately, we're not the ones who actually interpret the law. And if a judge looks at this and doesn't see gender and see sex, they're going to have to evaluate whether or not gender discrimination or talking about gender stuff is that. So I apologize. That's okay. Alright. Thank you very much. Senator Pohl? Thank you, Madam Chair. Senator Byrne, was there any data points or anything that you had in coming up with this? Like any information that demonstrated like the specific need to do this? I know you'd stated that this was about transparency and you'd stated just generally this quote unquote ends discrimination. But when I create legislation, it's usually, hey, I'm trying to solve this problem because there's been so many instances of this happening or there's been something that's that has occurred that I can point to. Can you demonstrate to us specifically what what's driving this bill? So there's lots of national and state conversation about making sure our laws treat everyone equally. There was a recent Supreme Court ruling about nondiscrimination in college administrations is one example. And and, of course, the new executive order that we heard from from governor Ron. You know, my bill tackles in what issues for the, you know, the K through 12 and and and the government issues. That's where it's derived from. So I understand that these things are, you know, these are conversations that are happening outside and and, you know, Governor Braun has has stepped in and has has said he's gonna eliminate the the DEI office. But I'm asking you as far as like Indiana specific, what what are what is going on in Indiana that's driving like that would essentially require something like this? I mean, what are I mean, I'm not even hearing anecdotal incidences of individuals that are saying, hey. Well, you know, I was discriminated against, and then we need a bill that does this. I mean, we haven't even heard anybody come to us and and and testify to that. I I can just tell you I filed a bill because I want everyone to be treated equally. And, and, again, this bill is about transparency and ending discrimination. That's that's why I carried the bill. So to your point about people being treated equally. Right? You know, if I run an agency or I have an office or whatever, and, you know, essentially, this bill would apply to me, you know, whether it's a I've got a school. I've got a, you know, I've got a branch of, you know, the government or I'm a government contractor. I think there's this one that applies that are government contractors as well as that the other bill. I can't remember. Either way, setting the stage here for you. You know, under your bill, it's it's I can't determine any who my hiring is going to be unless it is individuals that are, you know, the qualifications that I'm looking for, they have to meet and I cannot take into effect, you know, into a cut in in consideration diversity, equity, or inclusion. So if I'm trying to reach a population and, you know, all I'm getting is Harvard, Harvard grads are just dying to to work for me. And I just get a bunch of guys, they're all from Ivy League schools and they got the greatest grades and they, you know, I'm putting out there that I need to find individuals that are qualified for this. But really, what I'm looking for is somebody who I can connect with in the inner city. Somebody who I can connect with that, you know, that can essentially relate to individuals that I'm that is my objective of my office, whether I'm a teacher, whether I'm, you know, you know, provide some sort of service or provide some sort of government contract. Do you understand that under your bill, I could not essentially hire somebody based on what their experiences were or or what community that they came from if even if I was trying to help individuals from that specific community. Yeah. So, I I mean, I think the bill promotes the equal opportunity. But in in that instance, I couldn't say, hey. You know what? You know, I've got a I've got an office in Gary, and I'm really, really trying to you know, we're having problems. Nobody you know, we can't get people to come in through the door. Is this your private practice we're talking about? No. No. No. Definitely not my private practice. Yeah. Okay. But I'm saying is Just making sure. I'm I'm using that as, you know, Gary's a predominantly black city. Right? Sure. So if I'm if I am trying to hire individuals and I'm a governmental contractor And I want somebody that can help me relate to the individuals that I'm, you know, that my entity is trying to service. I couldn't say, okay. Well, I'm looking, you know, I'm looking to hire somebody from Gary that, you know, looks the looks the part of Gary that can speak to folks from Gary. Right? I would essentially have to say, oh, well, my you know, the objective of my office, I just have to go specifically off of that and be completely content neutral on anything else. And all I'm getting as far as, you know, applicants I don't know that you can you can't give me all the details. I mean, how how how why would you not be qualified? Well, again would the person not be qualified? I can't you can't tell me what you're just making stuff up here. No. No. No. I'm not making stuff up. No. Are you telling me that somebody's really not that great? Wouldn't be a great of a hire, and you're basing it on No. I'm saying so for example, we'll go with the example that I used earlier. I don't understand the We'll go with the example that I used earlier. Get one more hypothetical circle. Understood. This is it. I'll I'll I'll so I've got a bunch of people that are all, you know, that we I talked about earlier. You had the individuals that were, you know, white women that were being hired into into districts that, you know, were predominantly minority. You know, and you had individuals that were applying that had tons and tons of experiments to experience that were white women that, you know, they would want to work there. But ultimately, what the school district would need was somebody that could relate to the students. And they're having a hard time recruiting, you know, because, you know, for whatever reason, you know, there may not be as a, you know, a ton of applicants that are that are coming, that are, that represent the the community. In under your bill, the the school district would not be able to, you know, recruit. They would not be able to, promote or, even necessarily use it as a hiring factor to say, hey, you know, we need somebody from this community that looks like that. You understand that, correct? Yeah. But but I'm very confused about your question. You're telling me that you can't find somebody qualified. Are you saying I mean, I don't understand. No. No. No. Not somebody qualified. Yeah. Somebody that may not have somebody that may not be the the most common the most common applicant or somebody who, you know, essentially, there's only very few that are that are in the applicant pool in general. And so you I'm just gonna be here. As I I'm I'm We're we gotta move on. Yep. If the question is, can I hire someone who I think works best with my customers or my constituencies or whatever, then whatever skill set you decide they have to have, go ahead and do it? The point is, that's what we're hoping to get to. Can I is that in a nutshell, Senator Burn? Sounds good to me. I would say that that's what the concern why you would be able to hire somebody in that situation if it's somebody you need it. But you're but but but again, if if, for example, I'm an individual that was looked over for the position because somebody else that got the position was, you know, was African American or was Latino or somebody that, you know, was in a position where they, you know, I felt as if I didn't get that job because it was it was based on a DEI hire. Now I can complain about it. And now that now you now that organization or the that employer now is under scrutiny and they're, you know, facing a potential violation. That can happen today. The difference is is that you will be able to prove no. I had a I I picked the best person. But it wouldn't it was it wasn't about the best person. Okay. It was not under this I understand. We're probably gonna disagree agree to disagree what's best. Alright. Anyone have any other questions for center pool? Senator, correct. For Senator Byrne, and then feel free. We're gonna go around one time. You all get to discuss the bill. Thank you, madam chair. Senator Byrne, so just kind of to follow-up on this last question. Is it possible that, the best hire could be someone of color or minority and that would serve the purpose of what this bill would permit? Absolutely. Okay. And then I just wanna clarify, is this bill just about requiring the the posting of the trainings for the faculty and staff? Because there was a lot of discussion throughout today on portions that I I just I mean, I've read the bill Yeah. Twice, and I I just couldn't find some of the the items that were being discussed. Yeah. For the So maybe you could Go ahead. Kinda color add a little bit of color to it. I missed the last part. I'm sorry. Maybe you can add a little bit of color to it as to am I missing something? Yeah. No. It's it's about the training materials for staff and facilities, and, that's concerning, you know, the thought the concepts that's listed. And then, also any instructional or curriculum materials public you know, must be published too, that's that's that's concerning those same subjects. Thank you. That's for the education part. Yeah. Discussion on the bill. We'll go around one time. Anyone? Anyone? Thank you very much. I thought you would move over. Thank you, madam chair. If I could discuss the bill. I read the bill too, and it's not just about posting materials. I I don't know where that come from. It's the bill is nine pages long. If you could do I could do two pages on posting materials. There are words like prohibit from doing. There are words I won't get deep into it because I don't understand why it's so confusing. There are words like subpolitical subdivisions may not. This is not just about posting materials. So I'm confused by some of the reading of this this bill. But what I am convinced of is that senator Byrne believes that we have a problem with DEI in the state of Indiana. The words diversity, equity, and inclusion are a problem because he prohibits it. I'm still trying to figure out what that problem is. If you think something discriminates against you, you have a right to sue. I know people that have done it all the time. I teach corporations diversity. And I told you I was gonna tell you this story, and I saved it for last. We use the example of an elephant and a giraffe going into business together. And in order to make their widgets, they have to build a building. But the building has to have an interest that fits a a elephant and a giraffe. So how do you how do you build a building? Do you build a tall door or do you build a wide door? You build a tall and wide door. That's diversity. That means you make things accessible through any way that you can for everybody to have equal access. Equity is not a bad word. Equity says that if you give if somebody else has starts out with a 20 yard lead, you give the other person an opportunity to get to 20 yards, then you have the race. Inclusion says, if I want you, senator Byrne, to go to barbecue heaven and have a meal with me, then I should at least be willing to come to your district and have a dinner with you. That's called inclusion. That's the way I see it. This is from a kid who was born to the youngest child of a sharecropper from Louisiana, born in Lake Providence, Louisiana in 1970, where I still had to drink out of a dirty water fountain. It's amazing to me that people bring these bills saying we have a problem, but the people who are affected most by it never get part of the discussion. I'm trying to be as respectful and dignified as I can. This bill is more than just about posting information. This is going to hamper political subdivisions, for example, going to schools like Howard University Law School and seeking black law students because we only have one in Bloomington. We have one law student in Bloomington's incoming class in Bloomington right now in McKinney. When I was there, we had 18. So when you go and you recruit at Howard University, which is a predominantly black university that has a law school, you could be as a political subdivision, you could be violating this law. Why? Because you wanna make your your AG's office or your attorney's office more diverse? And I'll end with this. If you think it's more diverse, if you think it's somehow hampering the progression of the majority to actually achieve its goals and objectives, Look around you. Does it seem like it's working? Who's being harmed? I think the same people who were harmed in 1965 before the voting rights act are the same people being harmed today. And if you can't see it, then I can't open your eyes to it. But this is just gonna cause a whole even this next bill, which is gonna cause a whole bunch of dialogue about to do about nothing. These kids deserve diversity, equity, inclusion. They deserve the opportunity to have a better life than what I had growing up in Louisiana. And your kids deserve to say, your grandkids, because everybody benefits from DE and I. Senator poll. Thank you, madam chair. Yep. Senator Byrne, I think, you know, you had kind of said, you know, we got to read the bill. You got to read the I've read the bill. I've read the bill and it I I will echo pretty much everything that that Senator, Senator Taylor had shared. You know, what I don't think you understand is how this really applies in the real world and how this is going to truly impact folks. Not only the chilling effect, but essentially how this is going to actually be enacted and what's going to happen in the aftermath. So for me, in looking at this, you know, my my main concern is this. Essentially, you know, you have this you have a lot of talking points that you hear out there about DEI. And the young man that came up here and essentially said this is being demonized everywhere, you know, and it's being, you know, attached to different things. And, you know, again, this is not about, undoing quotas, for example. It's not as if you hear about DEI hires and you hear about these things as if individuals are out there and it's just, oh, we have to hire x amount of people that fit this amount of you know, this protected class. That's essentially, you know, it's been struck down by the courts. What we're talking about though is just devaluing experience, devaluing, you know, cultural differences. We're talking about devaluing, you know, what makes some of our institutions some of the best out there. I don't understand how this helps Indiana. I don't understand how this helps innovation. I don't understand how this helps excellence at all. Essentially, what I understand this to be is much more of a homogeneous approach. We'll just take everything out of account and only focus on one thing, which is likely standardized scores, GPAs, what school you went to, things of that nature. And even within that, those schools that you go to now have to apply this. So what I feel like this is going to do is just homogenize our culture and homogenize us as a country. You know, so this movement to it, I feel like is really, really regressive because it's not really it's not taking into account the value of a lot of these different communities that have added so much, so much to our, you know, to us as a state and us as a nation. It really does worry me that there are gonna be individuals that, you know, particularly young children because this applies to education that are gonna be underrepresented. They're gonna be disconnected. They're not gonna feel as if they're, you know, they're not gonna feel part of their school system if they don't see themselves in the teaching staff, if they don't see themselves in the nursing staff or the counselors. That to me is a very, very it's a very scary prospect because then, you know, you're talking about younger and younger that this is going to have an impact on. So, you know, I understand conceptually where you're getting that, right? You want it to be fair. You know, I heard you loud and clear what your intent on this was. You don't want anybody to, you know, feel as if they were getting, you know, they were they were skipped over for something that they were born with, right? And I get that. But I think that we're throwing the baby out with the bathwater in that intent because we're going way overboard on this and including the prohibition on things that really kind of make us great. The other part of that too is what really scares me is the conversation I had with the person from PAC Legal. The idea that like when I was a kid, if I would have got up and said something incredibly sexist or something incredibly racist, I'd have been in the principal's office right away. But, you know, based on the legal minds that you have that are, you know, that are, supporting this bill, they're essentially saying, well, you know what? The school should really stay out of it. You know, they should be neutral on it. It. They shouldn't have a say in it. They shouldn't you know, when the parents complain about it, you just tell them, sorry. The law says we have to be neutral. That to me is really, really that's very concerning. I mean, we just you know? We have a situation in which this is going to, I think, have implications that you don't really understand yet. And I think that is gonna be a big problem. So I really ask you to work on this work with us on this bill. Work with us to figure out, you know, what what I'm talking about that you're saying that's not right. Work with me on that to fix that, you know, and I I promise to work with you as well because I understand what your intent is. So appreciate that. Thank you. Alright. Thank you. Do we have any other discussion? We already have a motion and a second. Alright. Let's please call call the roll. Yes. Senator Alexander? Yes. Senator Buck? If I might, I just got through reading Martin Luther King's speech from beginning to end. It's very interesting read in light of our discussion about aye. Senator Freeman? Aye. Senator Carrasco? Aye. Senator Glick? No. Senator Cook? Aye. Senator Clark? Aye. Senator Randolph? Senator Poele? No. Senator Taylor? Explain my vote, madam chair. It's been less than thirty seconds. Time me. I read, I read Martin Luther King's speeches too and not just I have a dream, the one that everybody wants to quote. Martin Luther King was one of the purveyors of diversity, equity, and inclusion, which included the Jewish community, the Muslim community, and other communities. He would be appalled by the fact that we would sit here and say that those things don't matter. So because of that, I'm going to vote no, too. Chair Brown? Yes. Seven to three. Thank you very much, Senator Byrne. Senator Johnson? So I think we'll do the same thing. Senator Johnson will present his bill. I know some people have been waiting to testify. Not everyone here has already If you already testified on the previous bill, you're going to the end of the rule, and your time will be limited. And it's gonna be two minutes for witnesses, and I've been kind to kinda hold my watch up, my phone up. You all smile, but you ignore me. You, I'm going to have to gavel you. You're going to have to you know, it's coming. Shorten your remarks, please. Alright. With that, senator Johnson, the floor is yours. Oh, yes. I'm calling an amendment. Oh, thank you, senator Taylor. It's amendment number number three. We are doing the same thing we did with Senator Burnsville. We are removing the private calls of action, and there's only attorney general enforcement. So what's the rule of the committee? We have a second. Can we take that by consent? We have consent. Alright. Thank you very much. Now, you can go, Senator Johnson. Thanks, Senator. Thank you, Chairman Brown. So I mean, I've been sitting here listening for the last couple hours. I'm gonna be as brief as possible. I get how long these can be. Essentially, this bill establishes the prohibition and some requirements on state agencies, recipient of state contracts and grants, state educational institutions, and health professional licensing agencies regarding DEI or diversity, equity, inclusion. The second part, really, it's fairly prescriptive for state educational institutions on standardized testing guidelines, and it really protects from altering academic standards. I will tell you that I'm I'm a stand here today and tell you that last part of the bill needs some work. It's probably not it's a little difficult to operationalize the way we have it written, so I recognize that. If I don't get it fixed, it's gonna come out of the bill. I'm just gonna say that right now. So I'll say that because I had thought, and this is on me, we would not move this bill today. We are gonna move this bill today. But you understand those of you who are on this side what chairman's prerogative is, and we're gonna make sure that, these things are fixed. I trust senator Johnson. But, we are not meeting next week. I am concerned about our schedule. So I appreciate the forbearance of the committee. Go ahead. Thank you. So really, I mean, I'm not going to sit here and rehash the last three hours of conversation. So, I'd like to hear testimony. I'll come back up and take your questions afterwards. I'd be happy to do that. But, I just like to get out of the way for that right now. So Very much. Alright. Let's get started here. Doctor Friedman. And then on deck will be just give me two secs so we have somebody moving along here. Brian Sickma and then Eric Rasmussen. I think that person has oh, you're right. That's right. Gotcha. Okay. Well, thank you all, for the opportunity to speak here today. May I just ask, Senator Brown for forbearance, to allow me five minutes to give my speech? I'm at the IU School of Medicine. I think the information I have I've actually prepared a speech, and I was told that I would have five minutes prior to today. I know that it's okay. If it's not interesting, you can cut me off, okay? Okay. I appreciate it. Okay. My name is Doctor. Alon Friedman. I'm a professor of medicine at Indiana University School of Medicine, a physician of thirty years and a medical director of a local dialysis unit. For the past twenty two years at Indiana University, I've cared for patients of all types with all backgrounds, taught trainees of all levels and conducted research. I'm considered an international authority on nutrition and obesity in people with kidney disease. Today, I'm here to help urge you to vote for Senate Bill two thirty five, which places limits on DEI. Please note that my testimony represents my opinions only and does not necessarily represent those of IU or IU Health where I work. Being a physician has been tremendously gratifying spiritually, emotionally and intellectually, which is why it's so painful to have watched the DEI movement gradually but successfully capture all major medical institutions in The U. S. And in Indiana with support from medical leadership of all levels. In my opinion, the damage that DEI has inflicted on my profession has been enormous, which is why I believe it must be completely expunged from every corner of medicine. Due to time limitations, I'll focus on three major reasons why this is the case. First and foremost, the DEI movement is harmful to patient care because it dehumanizes patients. What I mean by that is that the DEI ideology classifies all individuals as belonging either to an oppressor or oppressed class and treats them accordingly instead of treating each patient as a unique human being. I've been shocked to witness on numerous occasions medical trainees or physicians expecting patients to adjust to their pro DEI beliefs rather than them adjusting to their patients' worldviews. This behavior undermines a fundamental millennial tenet of medicine. The physicians place their patients' well-being above their own interests. I've also unfortunately seen examples of how putting DEI ideology above patients' interests leads to adverse medical outcomes. A second reason to support SB-two 35 is because DEI rewards group affiliation over individual achievement. It undermines the foundational assumption that individuals are chosen to become doctors based on academic and holistic excellence. There is simply no doubt that DEI has undermined excellence in medicine and every American should be frightened by this. A prominent example is what happened at the prestigious UCLA School of Medicine. Recent attempts to force DEI into their admission process led to unprepared students being admitted and up to half of all UCLA medical students ultimately failing basic tests and medical competence. One former member of the UCLA medical school admissions staff said that DEI has turned UCLA into a failed medical school. I have no doubt that DEI has degraded quality in Indiana and elsewhere. One way it's done this is by forcing medical schools to switch from actual grades to passfail scores, which has now become the norm. This was done intentionally to obscure academic differences between trainees since it prevents distinguishing students achieving academic excellence from those that don't and haven't. This is as much a disaster for the general public as it is for the medical training system since medical excellence can no longer be differentiated from mediocrity. Fortunately, SB two thirty five will fix this problem by returning to actual graves. A third reason to support SB two thirty five is because DEI encourages a hostile mindset and grievous base mentality that is not fit for an academic institution. I am very familiar with this problem since I experienced it myself. A few years ago, I published, as a private citizen, a very short, respectful letter in a local newspaper where I argued that hiring the first DEI administrator in my local public school system would harm the quality of education in that system. I was immediately attacked by a social media group that posted fake negative reviews of my medical care on the Internet and tried to get me fired from IU School of Medicine. Shockingly, certain students, faculty, and even diversity deans at the School of Medicine took up their cause. They called me racist on social media. They considered picketing against me in front of my patient clinics. Ironically, one of the patient clinics was where I treat the indigent of Indianapolis. The medical education office told students they didn't have to work with me if they didn't want to. Some of them also tried to get me fired. Things got so bad I felt obligated to hire a lawyer. There was even a whiff of antisemitism in some of the social media posts. Not surprising, since studies and empirical evidence show high levels of antisemitism among DEI supporters in academia. My experience highlights the Stalinist like mentality of the DEI movement. While the D is set to stand for diversity, my experience and those of many others around the country in the medical field and elsewhere show that it stands for domination, discrimination and divisiveness. As my story shows, the DEI movement will crush anyone in its path who does not exceed to its demands or worldview. The most troubling aspect of this experience of mine were accusations that I was racist since I have devoted my entire thirty year medical career treating and too many times to count saving the lives of the poorest and most unfortunate individuals in our society who more often than not were of a racial or ethnic minority. In conclusion, I urge you to support SB two thirty five, which I am certain the silent majority of physicians in the state support because they, like me, just want to practice medicine, maintain high standards in their profession and care for their patients without any ideological ask to grind. I'm done and would be happy to take any questions you have. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. Doctor. Friedman? Yes, sir. Yes, senator. I don't think you're racist. Let me just say that. But you have an opinion and you have a right to that. Okay? So respectfully, whoever says that is it. But what I would tell you is that in your discussion, when you brought up the fact that you worked with poor and underrepresented people, that doesn't necessarily help your situation. And let me tell you why. Because the school that you represent in 2023 had about a quarter of its incoming medical students were students of color. In 2024, that same school that you graduated from now has a 8% student of color representation. So my question for you is, how does DEI that IU is putting together, how's it working in Europe? I thought I'd just explain that it's not working well at all. It's not working well for patients. It's not working well for physicians or other academic. So where's the so then let me ask you another question. Where's the harm? Because you said in your testimony, you don't want IU admitting people unless it's academic in nature. Right? They should have the best grades and they should get the best students. Right? Well, what I said was and by the way, I I didn't graduate from IU School of Medicine. I just worked there for the last two plus decades. Well, this yeah. You brought up But what I said was that what I said was that specifically was that we expect that individuals would be matriculated into medical school based on academic and holistic excellence. Those are my Academic and holistic. That's correct. Okay. Yes, sir. So right now, at your loss, at your medical school, eight per eight let me let me reverse that. 91.2% of the students are people of the majority. Okay? That's at your medical school that you work for, that you work at IU Health or, I don't know, IU School of Medicine. So how's it working? How's the DEI working in your opinion? Well, if you mean, I think that I'm not on the admissions board, so I can't specifically comment on that. But in terms of how is it working, I've just explained for a variety of reasons for a for a variety of reasons why in my experience and actually real life experience, I've seen DI be harmful to patients and harmful to the quality of education. And I gave you example of what happened at UCLA. And I believe that's happening in every medical school because we are not Look every forgive me. Yes, sir. Doctor. Doctor. Yes. Respectfully. This bill has nothing to do with patients has to do with admissions. You agree? Right? It didn't mention patients. No. But it has to do with patient care. It has to do with patient care. This has to do with patient care because the because the movement of DEI is very harmful to patient care. And the purpose of this is to avoid that. The purpose of this is to avoid that. And for the reasons that I enumerated, I have experienced and this is not by the way, this is not just me. This is physicians around the country. This is a crisis in medicine. And look, I don't my goal is let me just maybe I just say from the standpoint of my patients, they're not interested in the color of their doctor, the sex, the ethnicity, where the doctor came from. They want the best doctor. And that is what I want for my patients, the best physician. I don't care what color they're from. I don't care where they're from. I don't care what sex. They could be from Mars and green for all I care. If they're good physician, if they're the best physician that we can find, then I'm happy with that. But the problem is that, as I said, DEI does not support excellence in medicine. Respectfully, that's I I agree with you. I I want the best doctor too, but this bill is about Admissions, so I want to ask you the excellence that you're talking about is that grades Academia is grades, right? Okay, yes, I'll accept that as a definite so not just grades but academic achievement. Well academic achievement Let's just say we go based on academic achievement, right? What about experience in the community? Well, I'm not sure exactly what you mean by community. Well Let let me just tell you what I look. Again, I'm not on the I'm not on the admissions committee, but there has to be a minimum standard of academic excellence. After that, you could have many other aspects, many other facets of the of the individual that would be that would be that would help make one help make a decision about whether or not they should be Make a well rounded Absolutely. Well rounded, but there has to be a level of academic excellence. Could has start with academic excellence. Yes. So you're saying that IU and other dei supported programs lowered their academic standards to allow Who to be admitted into the allowance To allow students? I mean, this is not a surprise. Well, the evidence is the American Association of Medical Colleges published data about MCAT scores and GPAs So I'm not making this up. This is this is out you can you can Google this right now Academic excellence is one of the aspects of this bill. There are other aspects of the bill as well. To let what students in? Well, you want academic excellence. But what students were what students academic performance were lessened? Yes. What kind of students were admitted that didn't have the academic excellence to get in otherwise? Are you are you suggesting just a minute. Excuse me, senator. Are you suggesting doctor Freeman that you say you can Google with the information out there is that there has been an admissions policy at some medical schools that are accepting students with lower GPAs and lower MCATs, and it may be possible or probable in your opinion that those students do not matriculate? That is correct. And all I asked was the same question. What students are you talking about? I don't know. I'm not on the admissions committee. So are you talking about students of color? I think he just says I don't know. I don't know. Students with lower GPAs and MCAS. So this is And he doesn't know what they look like. I I'm not part of the medical committee, admissions committee. I I really don't know. But this is one just one aspect of the So this is merely academic in nature. This is merely lowering the standards academically across the board. So it could be a it could be a majority student. It could be a minority student. It could be a foreign student. That laws that medical schools are lowering the GPA and the academic standards to allow students in. Any lowering of the quality is unacceptable. But this is more than but this bill is more than just about admission of students as you I'm sure you know since you read the bill. This has to do with the environment that DEI advocates for or pushes forward in the whole hospital and medical school environment. And that's an environment that stifles free speech and that frankly as I said is highly intolerant. Look at my experience. I'm not making this up. This is what happened. And it's unacceptable that this type of behavior occurs, but it's supported by the DEI environment. That's just the reality, I'm sorry to say. Alright. Do you have any other questions, senator? Yeah. I just yeah. Well, I do I do just I'm a little confused because the data doesn't I thought he was talking about admitting students of color. Nope. He never said that, senator Teller. He said students Well, he brought up in his last academic. No. Madam madam chair, respectfully, he said that he often works with these people because he works in poor and impoverished areas, and he was talking about a particular group of people. So I am not let me finish, please. I am not making an assumption here. It was in his testimony that he works with with the underrepresented groups. Senator, I'm I'm not sure why you why you are so such so aggrieved. I'm the one that was called a racist. And I told you that I excuse me. And I told you that throughout my career. I've dedicated thirty years of my career to taking care of all patients, including those minorities. I don't know how anyone would ever call me a racist. I don't know either. Well, this is as I said, this is the type of environment that DEI promotes in medical schools. This is a perfect example of what happened. And this is the point of my talk about being here. Respectfully, all I did was ask you a question about what students were admitted, and you didn't know. And that's all I did. Thank you. And ask and answer. Senator Pol? Doctor. Freeman, this seems very personal for you. I mean, it seems like this is kind of your, you know, magnum opus in trying to clear clear yourself. I mean, essentially, it seems like you're very, very driven to be here specifically because of the experience that you had when you spoke out. Is that fair to say? Well, I'm not no. I'm not here to air air that type of thing at all. I'm just want to explain to you that in my opinion, DEI has had a highly negative effect on medicine. But one of exam one examples of this is me being, me being persecuted. Yes. But I'm not here to air this, that's not what I'm here for. It's one of the three examples I told you, three arguments why DEI should be inhibited or limited in the medical school system. And that you're saying that because of DEI and your persecu or sorry, because of your persecution and your ability to speak your mind essentially that that is why this bill is necessary. Well, it's not just me. But no, there are several reasons why. But as I said, there are several reasons why I believe DEI should be abolished from medical schools. That's all academic institutions. But for medical schools, I could I have a I have a I have a unique perspective and I have an individual perspective and experience. So, you had stated that it should be, you know, admission should be based on academic academic achievements. And then holistic is the word you threw out there. Yeah. Holistic excellence. Okay. What is holistic excellence in your definition? Well, I'm not on the admissions committee, so I don't have to make that definition. In my in my mind, it's someone who's well rounded, who's achieved in multiple areas, not just in academic in the academic arena. So what like what? I mean, I I'm I'm really struggling because, I mean, oftentimes, I think that when, you know, when an admissions office looks at it, they look at, you know, what the what a person's experiences are. Would that be part of holistic? Sure. And we're, you know, essentially potentially where that person's from, what their, you know, maybe what their world view is so they could have a well rounded student body that could come up with solutions and discuss things in a way that maybe just a homogeneous group that has gone to the most prestigious schools is probably not going to to think about. Safe to say? It could be. I I'm not certain. Would that not be part of DEI then? I mean, the idea that you would No. DEI means something very different than how you're defining it. Okay. As I said, I I I think I just gave you examples of what the reality of DEI is in the in our institution. And I think you're you're you're defining it in another way that is unworthful reality. So here here's There's a diversity, by the way, it's the most important type of let's go through them. The most important type of diversity there is in medical schools or all academia is intellectual diversity, period, in my opinion. Intellectual diversity. That's why we're there. So what does that mean? Okay. What is the intellectual It means having different varying varying varying, varying opinions. Okay? That are that are based in reality and Keep going. Keep going. Yeah. Yeah. No. So that's So so how do you get there, though? Intellectual diversity. That's what? How do you get there though? How do you get to intellectual diversity? But what what what I was what I was gonna say was that DEI does not value intellectual diversity. It it folks it it its its lens it sees the world entirely through the lens of race and of the oppressor oppressed class. So essentially It's part of critical race theory. That's, you know, that's based on critical race theory. Have you studied this? I mean I've read about it. Yeah. You've read about it. Which critical race theory is derived from critical theory. Yes. So I but you're not saying that you're an expert in this and that you understand the the concepts? The concepts? I'm not well, I I mean, I I've lived the concepts, unfortunately. Yeah. Okay. I I I mean, you're you're arguing with me theoretically when I'm telling you what what the what the situation is at Indiana University Medical School, medical schools around the country. I'm not the first one to talk about this. I mean, this has been going on for years and there's an enormous amount of material and examples on the Internet. I'd like to get back to the point that I was making. So when we were talking about essentially what the holistic evaluation would be, you said that it was part of, like, intellectual diversity. You know, and my my my question to you is, how does one achieve intellectual diversity essentially if you're talking about only selecting folks? You know, it's it's circular to me because then you're talking about, okay, well, how do you pick people that are intellectually diverse, that are not necessarily the top of their class? You know, like, I don't I don't the first thing we need to have again, I'm not ultimately this is very theoretical because I'm not on the admissions board. So I'm not really sure exactly what information you want me to provide. But at the minimum, we need academic excellence. And after that, we can talk then holistic excellence is a critical aspect to that. But you need as a minimum academic excellence. Okay. So and I agree. I mean, you were talking about people that are going to be operating on us as patients. Everybody would I agree with your point that we want people that are that we want the best doctors, you know, and they eventually get there after they go to what? Medical school. Correct? You know, but in we're talking this bill addresses admissions. Right? So people can be trained to become the best because they went to where did you go to medical school? I went to McGill Medical School. Is that a great medical school? It's a good medical school. It's a good medical school. Right? And you became a good doctor. And you're now you're now working at IU, correct? That's correct. And you've been there for a long time. You were able to achieve that. But you started with admissions. Right? So what I'm trying to I think what disconnect is is I think that what you're saying is because somebody has, you know, because admissions would take into account that somebody, you know, has, you know, was looked at because of a diversity or inequity or an inclusive solution that they would not be able to go through medical school and become something that was good. And I think you're saying that, well, anecdotally, you know, there's there, you know, these this hurts, DEI somehow hurts, the medical profession. But I haven't seen anything in particular that demonstrates that. I mean, I haven't seen any of the data. You didn't bring any of the data. We don't have any of that in front of us. We're just kind of taking your word and, you know, some of your own personal gripes with it, which, you know, is what it is. But what what I'm struggling here is I'm trying to piece this together where you can where you were essentially saying that, you know, hold you've got this holistic version of it. You've got intellectual diversity that can go into this. In your world, I mean, where what percentage of that is actually going to be applicable to the admissions process? I can't answer that. But what I can say is that this bill is much more than just admissions. This is the environment of the medical school, the postgraduate studies, the hospitals. This is not just about admissions. So we need to expand the import of this bill. Thank you very much for your time. Next, we have Brian Sickma, then Eric Rasmussen, then Cindy Basinski, I believe. Good afternoon, Madam Chairman, members of the Judiciary Committee. My name is Brian Sickma. I am here on behalf of Do No Harm Action, which is a non profit organization comprised of physicians, healthcare providers and citizens who are concerned about the disastrous consequences of identity politics in our communities and in the healthcare that we receive. Earlier this week marked the ninety sixth anniversary of birth of Doctor. Martin Luther King Jr. We've heard a lot about that today. And his actions from Selma to Montgomery and then from Montgomery to the National Mall sparked the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. An important component of that was Title six, which prohibits the federal government from discriminating on the basis of race, sex, national origin, or ethnicity. And since that time, in the ever never ending pursuit of realizing those high ideals, there have been a need for state laws to be enacted that ensure that opportunity and merit are available to all regardless of their background, regardless of where they come from or their station in life. And so that's what this bill does today. SB two thirty five is in keeping with Governor Braun's executive order, to promote merit in state contracting, but also in state boards and state commissions. And it's also in keeping with President Trump's executive order, which he released late last night about restoring merit to the federal workforce and the federal contracting. And so with that, I would certainly request that this committee pass legislation and Madam Chair, happy to take any questions if there are any. Thank you very much. Any questions? Senator Pol? Thank you, Madam Chair. How does this affect the women and the minority owned business initiatives that the state has promoted for the last decade or so? Thank you, Senator. Great question. So this does not contradict anything in federal law, that would establish contracting awards. It simply says you cannot make a decision based upon race or ethnicity or anything like that. But anything that's currently in federal law obviously can't be undone by an executive order. And so the statute of this the language of this bill should have become law, is in compliance with federal law. So what about yeah. I'm not talking about federal law, though. I'm talking about state programs. I'm talking about state initiatives. You know, how does this essentially, is this undoing all of those, There there's nothing Senator, thanks. There's nothing in this bill about state economic development incentives in any way, shape, or form. Well, I mean, ultimately, you have people that are going to be working under state contracts. They're going to be doing some of these state initiatives are going to be some that are going to be working with these state agencies. How does I'm what you're saying doesn't make any sense to me. I know that you're saying, well, it doesn't specifically state it, but how do you execute some of the contracts that these individuals that are going to be getting into without running a file of this law? So if you look towards the end of the bill, it talks about compliance with federal law. And so if there's a state program in place that is already compliant with federal law, then that will not be impacted by the legislation. What we're talking about here is any sort of contract awarded strictly a general contract. We're not talking about economic development incentives for different organizations, different types of business owners. But anyone who's contracting with the state needs to compete on an even playing field so that taxpayers of the state of Indiana understand that they're receiving the best services that their tax dollars can purchase. What about donations? So you have individuals that will donate $1,000,000 to some of the higher institutions for example, potentially something that is deemed DEI. So those donations now cannot be accepted. Is that essentially what I'm looking at under Section five? So with respect to institutions that are receiving grants or donations from private sector, there are already IRS laws about how that money can and can't be either channeled or the types of requirements that a donor may put on those funds. But there is no problem with an organization or an entity forming and empowering a private organization on a campus, for example, to promote their viewpoint or to assist anyone of the particular type of background that they're looking to reward. But when it comes to, like, the major donations to a state owned or a public institution of higher education, then, yes, then this is making sure that those contributions are not encumbered with any sort of, a DEI approach to how those funds can be spent. So what about the donations that have already been made that are currently appropriated for the next several years? I mean, are they going to have to give that money back? I think that's going to have to be a conversation that the universities have because once they receive that, there is no IRS requirement that a foundation or an individual donor is receiving those funds back. But obviously, any public institution will need to comply with the law. Thank you, madam chair. What's your name again? Brian Sickmas. And you're with? Do no harm action. Okay. Brian, I I wanna I wanna try to help you a little bit here. You do understand that no state entity or federal entity can provide a contract to somebody based solely on the fact whether or not they're minority or woman known. If there is a key factor that they can create as a way of weighting the contract. No. They cannot. You have to have the lowest price first. So there's a case called Bakke that establishes minority and women participation goals, and you have to have a compelling government interest in order to have a program. That's why states do what are called disparity studies to come up with the compelling government interest. Okay? So I'm trying to what I'm trying to do is, you know, try to help you in your testimony. There are no contracts being let paying more just because you're a minority contractor. So state of Indiana doesn't do that, and we have a main supplier diversity program. So that's the first thing. The second question for you is why do you have a problem with DEI? Can you tell me what the issue is with DEI for you? Senator, this isn't, you know, about my personal opinion on DEI. This is about making sure that the state of Indiana does comply with title six of 1964 civil rights act. So so you think it doesn't comply when you come up with so you're saying title six of the of the civil rights act that you said Martin Luther King Jr. Fought for, right? Yes, senator. Right. That there is conflict with DEI? I would say, Senator, that based upon any sort of structure of of academic argument, whether whatever you choose to name the program, that if you're attempting to give some sort of preferential treatment to an individual or penalize them based upon not their merit, but based upon their race or ethnicity or national origin, that does contradict federal Okay. Preferential treatment. So let's say you have two students that you you've read the case, the Michigan case and the Harvard case. Right? Yes, senator. Are you familiar with the decision by the Supreme Court on those cases? I am, sir. Okay. So let's say you have two students, both black and white, and they both have a 3.5 and score the same thing on the SAT. Right? Can the school choose the black student now to further their desire to help people who may not have the same opportunity that, say, a majority white person might have? I think the operative part of your question centers that they both have the same score. Okay. So can they do that? As long as they're making the decision based upon the scores. Obviously, there are a limited number of educational seats available in certain degree programs, particularly once you get to the advanced degree programs. No. What what I'm what I'm trying to yes. I I hear what you're saying, but do do you understand my question? Can can race base can they use race as a basis to admit that student? I think you can look at it and say they can make a decision about the total composition for the class. They can build a lot of other factors into whether or not they can accommodate students. Like whether or not like whether or not they have a diverse campus? I would say based upon the Supreme Court ruling, senator, then they have to make a holistic decision about what their program is doing. Right. And they can't discriminate or advance or hold back any student based upon factors of race. We have to look at the merits of the individual and the test scores that they have going into the program. Sir, the question is real simple. Can they make the decision that they wanna have a diverse campus and admit the black student under the case that you've read? And I'm referencing that case center, which says that they need to have academic standards or uniform across say yes? Are you saying yes? I'm I'm just pointing out the case center, which says uniform academic standards across the board. That's what the case was about. It's not it was not about you okay. Here's okay. So the last question for you, You like this bill because you think it doesn't discriminate against anybody. Right? I believe it restores an equal playing field across the board. Equal playing field. And that's what you think. You want equality, not equity. Right? So you want everybody to start at the same place and end up in the same position and be judged on the same plane? I think the rules of the game, regardless of where we start, should be applied evenly across the playing field. I'm glad you said that. Okay. Alright. I just wanted to make sure that we you're about equality. You're not talking about equity, though. I'm saying that since I You want everybody to be treated equal? Absolutely, senator. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, madam chairman. I'm Eric Rasmussen, director of a a director of the MIT Free Speech Alliance, former IU professor, retired now, only for affiliation. I don't speak for either of those. I'll mention though that, at MIT, MSSA, an alumni free speech organization, has worked very well with the new president who became the first college president, I think, in in the country, certainly the first big time one, to ban DEI statements for hiring. So it's kind of thing that can be done. Ask Bill. You'll get a question on it. And I've been banned hyphen, canceled twice. So I think I beat you, doctor. But I won't talk about that today. I'm thinking so. Yes. I know. I know. Four points. Point one, the ERA says equality of rights under the law shall not be denied on account of sex. Well, president Biden was wrong in thinking it was ratified that way, but it's kind of fun to see the current bill doing that. It say you can't promote differential treatment, or provide special benefits to individuals on the basis of race, sex, color, or ethnicity. If you like the ERA, you should like this bill. Point two, the attorney general really does need to look carefully at what state agencies are doing. We all know there is blatant illegal discrimination on the basis of race in American colleges. The Harvard lawsuit showed that. It seemed very clear that Harvard said Asians had bad personalities. On all the objective stuff, they did well, but they somehow in the personality score, they came out lower, and they seem to have a quota. You could look at the percentage of Asians. It stayed very constant over the years. IU is like that also. Let me read a memo from the Kelley School where I worked. Kelley School had a let me see this. An associate dean for diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging. It doesn't anymore. However, now it has, after months of discussion preparation, a new access, empowerment, and societal impact framework for programming, and the man is a dean of that now. So you, have to look very carefully in this. You have to have the attorney general approving programs or the universities are gonna try to slip one by you. In accord with this, they're also changing the Kelly Office of Diversity to the Office of Access and Community Enhancement. Graduate Office of Diversity Inclusion is Graduate Office of Access and Community Enhancement. And the, executive director of DEIB will be executive director of Access, Empowerment, and Societal Impact. How much time do I have, Madam? Time over. Okay. Technical things then. On the enforcement provisions, I'd like to suggest that you might want to amend it to say that the court must award attorney fees to a winning plaintiff rather than may award them because it's expensive bringing these things. And there's a risk that if you win, you may be wiped out not paying legal fees having done your duty for Indiana by pointing out some misdeed. Also, more technical thing, the judge may Larger of actual damages or a $100,000. This means that he can't award actual damages if they're less than a 100,000, and I don't think this is intentional. So you might think about getting rid of the greater of in line 20. And, I do have some wording that you can think that you could think about, staff person. Okay. Thank you. Thank you for bearing with me. That's it. Thank you very much for your testimony. Next, I have miss Vasinski and then Philip Genevan. And then on deck will be Lauren Box. Good afternoon, senators. Thank you for allowing you to speak today. I'm Doctor. Cindy Basinski and I'm a practicing physician here in Indiana. I've been in practice for, 25 years nearly as a private physician. In another 4 years, I went went to IU School of Medicine and I also went to Purdue University. So I'm a Hoosier through and through. Additionally, I have been an adjunct faculty member at IU teaching medical students for the past 15 years. I'm also, teaching students at University of Evansville, ISU, and the, deaconess family practice residency. So I have a lot of interactions with students and, learners. I'm also a researcher. I'm also a business owner. I've owned my business now for the past 22 years. But the most important thing that I am is a mother. I'm a mother of 2 medical students. I have one that's at IU School of Medicine who's now in her 4th year of education. I have a student at Marion, doctor, medicine of, osteopathic medicine, who is also a 4th year medical student. And I have seen encroachment of DEI ideology into my work. But when my students when my children became students and matriculated into the medical school, I really had a firsthand look at how DEI is impacting their education. And it has been very negative. Now I'm going to stand here and say every person deserves the freedom to speak. Every person deserves the freedom to achieve. Every person deserves the right to have equal opportunity to have success in this world. That doesn't matter what your race is, that doesn't matter what your sex is, that doesn't matter what your gender identity is or your sexual orientation is. And I highly support that everybody should be having equal access to that. However, what's happening right now is DEI institutions with our medical schools are empowered to control language and control speech. And that is not fair to many of the students that are now going to school right now. So for example, my child or and by the way, because of my children in medical school and they understand my, sensitivities towards DEI and how that may be impacting their education, I have many medical students and kids of all levels of education coming to me to discuss with me how DEI has negatively impacted their medical education. So for example, there might be a discussion about minor gender affirmation care. And admittedly, there are many physicians who agree with that. On the other hand, there are many physicians who do not. That is not allowed to be discussed or it's not able to be discussed because students know that there's retribution for speaking up about these things that they do not agree with an opinion. And so therefore, these students just don't say anything. They don't say anything if someone stands up and says, I'm offended that we're talking about obesity. We shouldn't be talking about obesity. That is one of the students stood up in one of my son's classes because they were talking about obesity and the negative effects on health care. And students stood up and said that is offensive. We shouldn't be talking about obesity. We shouldn't that is offensive to people. And they stopped the conversation. They stopped the lecture. The lecture never was given because they spent the rest of the time arguing about the merits of obesity as a medical condition. This is negatively impacting their education because certain individuals feel that they can speak up and if anybody else speaks up against it that is not with what the DEI ideology mandates then they are punished. Now let me tell you something about medical education. There is no merit based reasoning behind where they end up in their residency training. Okay. So now there's pass fail on grades, pass fail on step 1. And when you get to clinicals, it's a combination of you do take a test that you get graded on, but it also is in combination with the evaluations that you get from the preceptors. And depending on the thoughts of the preceptors, some of them are very punitive. In fact, there was a student that talked about how they were disagreeing with 1 of the preceptors about 1 medical debate and it could have been minor information care, it could have been LBGTQ issues, it could have been any of these equity in different races. That student went there with good faith to discuss that with that preceptor and that preceptor wrote them a terrible evaluation. Now I'm not saying that the student did or didn't do a good job, but I can tell you there are punitive measures that happen when students disagree with certain people and especially in the DEI department. And you have seen many people come up who are part of the DEI department. I don't think that anybody here is saying that there's not discrimination. There's discrimination across the board of all kinds. And we have to recognize that there by institutionalizing DEI into our medical education, we're institutionalizing discrimination against certain parts of our medical student body. And that is not fair to them. Every student should be able to speak up and speak up about what they think about any issue. That is the core of science. Science is we stand up and we debate respectfully with one another. I don't call you a name. If you disagree with something that I don't, that's fine. Let's talk about this. But to go and feel that a student cannot speak up because they're gonna get penalized and that is what is happening in DEI. DEI has been bastardized in medical school to be a punishment tool against students who do not adhere to the ideology of administrators and educators, especially in centers like Indianapolis where it happens to be more progressive. I will tell you it's even happening in Evansville. And I also tell you what DI is doing because it allows people to be named as oppressors or some people to be named as oppressed. It automatically brings people in to say you are a bad person. There was a male student who stood up a white male student who stood up to say something about a comment about a woman's issue, and I think it happened to be on abortion, and literally was told by another person in the room, you need to sit down because you have white privilege and you have no right to speak on this topic. That person was not reprimanded. That person was not told that was wrong to do. That was okay. DEI is institutionalizing racist, discriminatory behavior against people and their thoughts. And diversity of thought is stifled by DEI. And I'm living it, my children are living it, and we are living it in residences. Children are afraid to speak up because their future solely rely on recommendations and evaluations by the people around them. They are afraid to speak up. You are only allowed to speak up if you agree with progressive ideologies because the people who speak against that are called racist, homophobic, and every other kind of work even though those individuals display none of that in the behaviors that they've had to get into medical school. To get into medical school, not only do you have to have academic success, you have to show that you volunteered in your community, that you have been a part of that community. We use lots of reasons to admit students into medical school. But we shouldn't be using quotas or any other reason. You come to medical school because you have the qualities and the intelligence to be there. After that and if you know what, if you don't meet the intelligence or baseline qualities needed to be in medical school, then we need to improve our educational system starting in kindergarten. It can't start in medical school. So I submit to you that DEI is harming our medical students. It is causing distress. It's causing anxiety. It's causing fear. It's suppressing speech. It's doing all kinds of things. And by the way, we should have a department where everybody can speak. If you have DDI ideology and you want to talk about true diversity, inclusion and equity, let's do it. Let's have a conversation. But to shut it down just because someone doesn't believe in that, that's wrong. That's all I have to say. Thank you. Thank you very much. Do we have any questions? Center poll. Thank you, Madam Chair. What was your last name? Basinski. Basinski. Doctor. Basinski? Yes. Okay. So you had brought up an instance where you had stated that an individual had stood up and had brought up the abortion rights issue. And then an individual had retorted that, well, you have white privilege. Correct. Would you consider that racist? I would I would consider that stifling of free speech, and that makes that person sit down and not want to speak anymore, especially when the individuals around them, the educators around them don't say, listen, we cannot be calling people names and saying things about their character that you have no idea what's going on in their lives. Okay. So let me ask this, though. In an instance, were you here when we were talking about the other bill? Yes. Okay. So I'll save you the putting together the hypothetical. But do you recall the conversation where we were talking about that under this DEI bill, you have institutions that essentially have to stay neutral Correct. On these issues, completely neutral. So in the instance where you have an individual that's stating, oh, well, that's white privilege, now you're talking about white privilege, they can't stop that individual because we're, you know, we're having a discussion. Now we're talking about because really what the instance is, what I would brought up and what PAC legal had essentially agreed to was that in that instance, if somebody gets off and starts spouting off racism, spouting off sexism or saying things that, you know, may offend anybody, but that's essentially their ideology, your free speech that you're talking about, they can't stop them. So I'm confused because it seems like what you're asking about What I would like Hold on. Do not interrupt me, please. Okay. You know what, Senator Pol? You're gonna be respectful of the witnesses because these are civilian witnesses coming, and they've all waited patiently. There are very few lobbyists speaking today. You can have a little bit of a short time with them. Okay. I've been pretty patient too. So ask the question and if it gets too hypothetical, then we're just going to be done. But I was going to say, I would like to finish the question before it gets answered. My question though is, I mean, what I'm hearing from you is essentially that what you're stating is that you didn't like that that individual was able to, you know, to not speak what they felt. But another individual that was, you know, essentially what the hypothetical that we presented was that school should stay neutral regardless of what the content is. Correct? Okay. So this goes exactly to DEI. You have an institution, you have an organization within medical schools that condone certain beliefs, behaviors, but they punish other people's for other belief and other behaviors. And yes, I do believe that the solution to bad speech is more free speech. And so when someone stands up and says, you are right white privileged person that we should be facilitating as educators. Okay, let's have a conversation about this. That was tell me more about why you think that is. Instead of just shutting down conversation telling the person to sit down and shut up essentially. And that's what's happening. So yes, I do think that individuals, students should be able to bring up controversial topics, have opposing views that may not be what is in the majority And that administrators who are paid by all of us, the taxpayers of Indiana, should allow free speech and free discussion about the fact. That's not what you stated though. What you stated is that that individual was not reprimanded. Do you recall that so you stated originally? You said that the individual was not reprimanded. Now let's have a conversation about it. That's very punitive of the person to sit stand up and say that. And it was very punitive to the individual who is just trying to make a conversation about whatever topic it was. And this is what's happening. Somebody will stand up and say, that is racist. That is homophobic. These statements that are being made are very suppression that's oppressive to free speech, suppressive to individuals expressing their individual ideas. And you know what? It's scary. It's scary. And by the way, many of the people, the professors, the other faculty that are around them also are in charge of writing recommendations for these students. They're deathly fearful of saying something that they're told if you offend 1 person, you're a terrible person, you're racist, you're homophobic, you're all of these things, and they shut down conversation. But what you understand is that this bill goes way beyond that. This bill would essentially say that you can't shut down these conversations. I don't think that's what this bill says. I mean, I'm telling you, I don't think that's the thing. You have to remain neutral. DEI needs, We should not be paying for politic political positions in our administrators and our educators in education, period. I don't care what it is. We should not be having standardized. And you know what? You start to say we can't talk about this. Then it extends to something else and it keeps extending. Where do we draw the line on what free speech is or what good speech is or what bad speech is? That shouldn't be done by administrators or faculty or other people within the institution that are paid by our tax dollars. If you want to have a group, a club, a DEI club, and people can go and discuss that, that's fine. You can have freedom of speech, you can have a pro choice, you can have a pro life, you can have any kind of group that you want. But on an education basis here because the original point was that you had an individual that wanted to talk about women's rights that was a male white male. Right? And that And that suppressed free speech. That accusation was is what happens all the time is that support free speech. That wasn't even appropriate for him to discuss because it should be discussed in a club or something else. I mean, to me, it's just you're jumping What I'm saying is is that when someone stands up and calls someone a name to suppress free speech, that should not be condoned by educators or anybody else in the educational system. We should be number 1 saying number 1, listen, we need to talk respectfully each other and that's calling someone a name. I'm sorry. When you say that, in my opinion, that's calling someone a name. So this discussion that we had earlier was that ultimately that an individual could get up and talk about their ideology. They can get up and talk about that they believe sexism is a good thing. That they believe that, you know, women shouldn't be in the military. That they can get up and they can talk about these things. Right? That you can't personally look at somebody and say you're a sexist or you're a racist. I'm not going to be rude to her, but she does continue to talk over me yet until I'm doing it. Do you know what, Senator Pol? We're not talking about the last poll last bill and But they're properly. Love your brain, love the hypotheticals, but we're not talking about the military. We're talking about this in Indiana today. True. True. I'm just saying I'm using that as an example, but ultimately what I'm No. I'll use that as an example. What we're what I'm saying what I'm ultimately saying though is on one hand, you're saying that these things should be everybody should be free to express these things. And ultimately, what this bill says is that ultimately, these things can be discussed in the court and the the schools and the administrators have. I'm gonna before you start, let me finish what I'm saying. These administrators have to remain neutral. And to your point, you've stated that you know this is this is some this is something that should be discussed in a group and and and a side of this. But it sounds like to me what you're saying is that your point of view should be valued and that should be uninhibited. You're misconstruing what I'm saying. That is not what I'm saying. Well, let me ask this directly. If you had an individual that was getting up and talking about things that were deemed sexist or racist or whatever, should that individual be told that that can't be discussed in school or that they can't be discussed? Or should that be something that is discussed My instinct I'm just gonna intervene. That's a loaded question, senator poll. Who decides what's deemed sexist or racist to that very point? You can't talk about obesity in medical school? Are you kidding me? I'm not we're not talking about obesity. And and she never said abortion or women's rights. You put those words in the mouth. No. She didn't. She didn't say women's rights. She did. I I did say that I think the gentleman stood up and happened to be a pro life individual. Yeah. She didn't say women's rights. No. She said women No. I mean, we can replay the tape. No. We're not replaying the tape. Okay? My point is the point is here, who's gonna decide that is he is that individual now sexist? That's the whole problem. The problem is, can they have the conversation? I think the point is have the conversation, but But he didn't have a conversation. No. What I'm And what I'm Someone was one-sided. Correct. And what I'm saying is, is that when that person stood up and said, you are a right white privileged person, that was a direct derogatory attack on that person to quiet them and make them sit down. And so that is when I'm like, if you wanted to say, okay, listen, let's talk about how individuals who might be white male are more likely to be pro life and, you know, does that involve white privilege? Okay. That's a different way we approach it than saying you are a white privileged person. You need to sit down. You have no right to talk about this. Understood. Understood. Okay. So that's just 2 different issues. If it's pointed, but I'm just saying in general, I mean, if you had a discussion about this, you know, to me what you're saying. But will the person who is overseeing this discussion, are they going to equivocally treat both sides of that in an equal manner? And that is not happening right now in medical school. So here's the thing is, but my situation is the way that So here's the thing is, my situation is, the way that the bill is written ultimately is that administrators, teachers, everybody has to stay neutral on every topic. So if you, even if it's not even if it's specific, even if it's not specific to an individual, if you had somebody that was speaking about their ideology and everybody else in the room agrees, because it is. I mean, you had somebody that got up and said something that was blatantly and was discussing something that was blatantly sexist or blatantly racist. And it's in the medical context, whatever you wanna put it in. At that point, what this bill says is that nobody you know, that essentially the the school, everybody has to be completely content neutral on that. Can I give you a different example of why I absolutely believe this? I had a student I'm I don't want an example. What I'm asking is an answer to my specific question is to Yes. They should be free to speak about these things and have a neutral bias a neutral arbitrator of the data so that or the information so that both sides can speak equally. Even if every other person in the room disagrees with that, if a person has an opinion and it is not directly targeted at a certain person, they're talking about sexism or racism or whatever in general terms that they're talking about a policy or a medical study or whatever it is. Yes, we should have discussions about that. That's what this is about. I can tell you right now there are opinions that have happened in medicine that one person said this was the way it is and the entire medical community said this isn't. And guess what? 10 years later, a decade, 2 decades later, that one person was found to be right. We don't know what's right and what's wrong. What we know is that we can have respectful speech between each other. That's all. None further. Yes, sir. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. Doctor, thank you for coming testifying. The dialogue that you just had the situation you explained, you're blaming that on DEI? Yes, I am. Okay. Yes, I am. How? Because the people that are put in DEI positions are extremely cemented in their views. They do not like, in general, I'm not saying everyone, I'm just saying in general, DEI departments put forward certain ideology that you either adhere to. And if you don't, then you will be punished or reprimanded or not get a letter of recommendation or not move on or not get whatever grade it is that you want. What does that have to do with a classroom discussion where kids said something? Are you saying there was DEI in the room? What's the situation? Yes. Oh. I'm telling you right now that please don't say CRT. I mean, we've been past that. She can answer the question as she chooses to answer, Senator Taylor. Respectfully, though, I heard it come up earlier. I didn't go through this. But if you could do all right. I'm sorry. All right. So you're saying that IU School of Medicine is now infusing DEI and CRT into the medical school classes? Yes. Okay. I just read to you earlier that 92 92% of the students at IU Medical School right now are students of the majority, right? Right? Just because you're in the majority doesn't mean that you aren't adherent to DEI ideology. You can be of any race, any color, any, orientation and be adherent to DEI ideology. And DEI ideology, it doesn't just involve race. It involves LBGTQ issues. It involves pro choice, pro life now. All of a sudden, it includes all kinds of things that DEI departments are now advocating for and suppressing other students from speaking up about Ma'am, that I I don't understand. So DEI is the reason why a student can't have a conversation with another student in class? That's correct. And it's because just so I get your your theory right, it's because they don't espouse DEI. If a student got up and espouse DEI rhetoric, then they would be allowed to speak. That is correct. And this is going on in our Let me just say this, and I and it's not a direct thing. It is a very subversive, penalizing, intimidating process by which this happens. And you know what? We have institutionalized the idea that some individuals in education can coerce intimidate students to not speak. And that shouldn't happen to anyone. I don't care. It shouldn't happen on any topic to anyone. Ma'am, I agree with you. I think we agree on more than what you do. Yes, we do. But we don't. Can you can we can we correct one thing though? We don't have quotas, right? Let's just agree on that. Again, I'm not an admissions person, but what I will say is But you just you can't be not an admissions person and then be an admissions person So let me ask you this. Do you think it's appropriate to have quotas? No. Never have. It's illegal. Okay. Then we agreed on that. But you said quotas. You said you said quotas. I didn't say anything about quotas. Okay. Thank you very much for your testimony. Alright. So we have, I think, Phil Ginevan. Hope that's how you you're not you are or you're not testifying? Anyone? Anyone? Okay. Then I have Lauren Box, Angela Smith Jones, Kathleen Mars and Ross Teer. Thank you, Madam Chair, members of the committee. My name is Lauren Box. I am a partner at Barnes and Thornburg. I represent the independent colleges of Indiana which is the association of the 29 private colleges and universities here in the state. In the interest of time I will say we have had a number of conversations with Doctor. Johnson. He's been very receptive to the concerns that we have and he's committed to work with us. So certainly look forward to that continued conversation and working with him on those concerns. Thank you very much. Any questions? Senator Taylor. So Lauren what part of this what part of the discussion has he been open to? I'm sorry, Senator, can you say? You said you're working with Doctor. Johnson on this. What things do you want to change in here? So Senator, the only part of the bill that applies to the private institutions is the health education program piece of the bill. We have shared with Doctor. Johnson, number 1, that it does impose an unprecedented amount of regulation on our private institutions, which has not historically existed. We are private. We do not receive public funding in the same way that, you know, a state agency would. So we would like to continue to maintain that autonomy over our institutions and their decision making. We've also shared some operational concerns with him primarily around the standardized testing requirement. As it's currently written, we read it to require that every single student, undergrad, graduate at all of our institutions that have health education programs would have to require a standardized admissions test. And that would just be operationally a very big change for our institutions. And I know from talking to Doctor. Johnson, that wasn't his intent. So I'm glad you brought it up because I was gonna bring it up in my closing, but thank you for leading me. So doctor Johnson wants everybody to take standardized tests. Right? You'd have to ask him what his intent Is that in the bill? What? The It's the language is the language in the bill that says everybody would take standardized tests. So, senator, the way the plain language is drafted, I read it that way, but I know from talking to doctor Johnson that I I believe he intended something a bit different with how it's drafted. Well, I wish okay. That's great. All right. Thank you, Laura. All right. Thank you very much. Anyone else? All right. Next. I believe I said Angela Smith Jones, Kathleen Mars, Ross here. In theory, these people are neutral. Good evening. Thank you, chairwoman, members of the committee. I'm Angela Smith Jones. I am here representing Indiana University. And we have already had the opportunity to meet with Senator Johnson regarding the components of the bill of which some of our deans and members had some concerns. It's the component regarding the health professions and very similar to what Lauren Box just indicated. The components that we find very difficult to operationalize the way the language is written. But we've been working with Senator Johnson. We'll continue to do so in order to refine the language and ensure that our healthcare professions, education and training will be appropriate. So happy to take any questions, but I also wanted to be brief out of respect. Questions? Thank you. Good evening, members of the committee, Madam Chair. I appreciate you allowing me to come up. I am Ross Cheer with Indiana Bankers Association. I appreciate the opportunity to testify on Senate Bill, 235. We are officially neutral on the bill. We appreciate working with senator Johnson on addressing some of the concerns that we brought forward to him. He's been very, helpful in working with us through that process. Our primary concern lies in the language on page 3, section 6, which applies to DEI restrictions to entities receiving state contracts or grants. This section raises questions about its potential impact on Indiana Financial Institutions. The language appears to affect banks that hold state public funds, manage accounts for the state, or facilitate credit card transactions. The certification requirement mandating entities receive state contracts to certify they won't use state funds for DEI initiatives poses an operational challenge, for banks. Banks don't bifurcate funds in a way that allow for us to for such process, precise allocation as incoming funds support both HR functions and operational costs. We remain committed to working with Senator Johnson, and met the chair to come up with a solution to this. And we are again, neutral on the bill. Happy to answer any questions. Thank you very much. Any questions? Alright. Thank you. Alright. Now, we have opposition. Those were all the neutrals. And so I have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 people have yet to testify today. You get 2 minutes. 2 minutes. I'm gonna have to hit you with a gavel. Just kidding. Wouldn't do that, but you're done. If you already spoke, you can get up to say, I'm opposed and say your name. That's it. We have pretty much understand what you're gonna say. Alright? So I'm gonna start down the line. May change my mind if people have just left. Elise Smith, please come up. On deck, Cecilia Pointer and after that and I apologize. I know it on this rate. Yep. Your cube today. Right. Not even close. Alright. Ma'am. Good afternoon. Thank you so much for this opportunity. I oppose this bill as someone who stands before you as a staff member, a faculty member, and a PhD student doing work within diversity, equity, and inclusion. A lot of the information that has been presented today has been misconceptions. We don't come from a space of anger. We come from a space of looking at the historical day historical data, especially on campuses where I have facilitated at med schools across the country asking to have conversations about this to better understand what does it mean when you have different identities historically that has been shut out of these spaces. I have grandparents who have come from South Carolina to Detroit, Michigan, where I have ended up in Indianapolis, Indiana, who was denied health care to the point my grandfather lost his life this summer simply because he asked for medical attention. The bed was not large enough. He broke his leg. It led to amputation. Again, I stand before you as I have had rural international and urban students come back to me and say I have had misconceptions, and I appreciate the language, the research, and everything you have presented today. So before we have these conversations saying that we are opposing and trying to oppress groups, what we're trying to do is open up that lane to say, would you please look at the opportunity of what it looks like? My GPA and where I come from said I would not stand before you today. 50 years ago, it would have been illegal for me to have any of these conversations today. So I want you to keep in mind, as we try to back roll some of this stuff, higher education institutions are one of the last places where I have seen students grow, I have had literally students come back 10 years later and say, thank you. I have done better in my medical career. I have done better as a nursing student. I have done better as an educator. And I work with local public and charter schools here to have these exact same conversations. So before we kinda look at this and demonize it, we have to look at 1968 college students stood up to push back against this, and this is where it came out of the Civil Rights Act. And students decided to say, we're gonna stand up even in international spaces to make sure we continue this work. So before you make the decision, remember, you get to go home and not deal with this as I stand boots on the ground every single day out of passion to make sure we make a change. So I oppose this bill because, again, it's not thinking about the larger picture Because when we are all gone, we still have to leave a society behind. Do you want to have a hand in what was right? Or do you want to continue to see this opposition in this room where we're sitting 6 hours later and not coming to an agreement? Thank you. Thank you very much for your testimony. Any questions? All right. Cecilia Pointer, Yaquip said A. And then I believe it's Mark Russell. Yes. I am here to oppose SB 235. Why is DEI so scary to those trying to eliminate it? How did it become the next boogeyman? I had something else, but quite obviously it's because people get their feelings hurt when they're held account to what they say and, for other reasons that DEI should not be blamed for. How a classroom is conducted doesn't have anything to do with DEI. But anyway, I did have the whole definition. Everybody's explained it really well that have explained it accurately. So my point is on page 2 where it says, you're against coordinating, creating, developing, designing, implementing, organizing, planning or promoting policies, programs, training, practices, activities or procedures relating to DEI, which is everything that was just discussed about fair treatment and fair participation. Much of SB 235 is concerning, but I'm gonna skip to the part dealing with health professionals. I am not a health professional, but I seek health care and I am very picky who I choose and I will choose a woman over a man any day. Why wouldn't we want knowledge about how to include and treat diverse patients equitably as a condition of licensing? According to the Association of American Medical Colleges, diversity, equity, inclusion are critical tools that help achieve excellence in patient care by better preparing physicians to care for all communities across the country. It helps healthcare providers better understand and address the unique needs of diverse patient populations, ultimately leading to improved patient care, reduced health disparities and more equitable healthcare systems by enabling providers to recognize and overcome unconscious bias. If you believe that implicit yes. Just my last sentence. If you believe that implicit, unconscious and systematic bias no longer exists and that we shouldn't try to eliminate it in employment, health care and education, then you haven't been paying attention, perhaps willfully. Next we have, and again, I apologize. Chairwoman Brown, thank you so much for allowing public testimony today. My name is Yaqub Saadah, and I am the community engagement coordinator for the Indiana Muslim Advocacy Network, also known as Iman. I stand here before you guys also as a recently graduated student from the Indiana University Indianapolis. I'm a Muslim American, a Middle Eastern Hoosier, and I oppose SB 235. While at university, I was able to access my school's diversity, equity, and inclusion office, and this space allowed me to find community with those who also experienced growing up in a society that was not built for someone who looks like me. I was able to find support amongst my peers and the university administration. Now in the workforce, I'm involved in interfaith organizing. We connect with many other organizations and learn from one another. Our Hoosier Muslim community is very diverse, and through Iman's work, we've been able to connect with a variety of minority communities in Indiana, including Arab, African, and Latin American communities. DEI practices are not about giving unqualified people special treatment. Our Hoosier minority communities work very hard for themselves and for their families. They bring a new and global perspective to many offices, and our world, our state, our campuses, and our workforce is more global than ever before. DEI practices allow us to understand our local and global communities, and the way that we combat isolation within our communities is by talking to one another. Rather than dividing us, it allows us to learn from one another and connect with each other in our communities, which is why I oppose SB235. Thank you for your time and consideration this afternoon. We hope to be able to work with you guys on moving forward and finding the best way that we can get our communities connected. Thank you. Thank you very much. Yes, sir. I gotta get the producer first. I appreciate your testimony, young man. Thank you. Senator Teller? Thank you. Thank you. Nice seeing you. You said you just recently graduated from IU Indianapolis. Did you ever feel stifled or in any way restricted on what you could say in the classroom or having intellectual discussions about your opinions or any kind of issues? I wouldn't say in the classroom. Yeah. No. What did you feel like you couldn't express, you know, say some of your Muslim theories or Muslim thoughts and religious thoughts? Did you feel like you restricted it anyway? I don't believe so in the classroom. No. Okay. What about around campus? I mean, sometimes when it came to anti war protesting, I would experience I would fear censorship. But besides that Interesting. So you didn't feel like you could express yourself on campus, but in the classroom you were okay? Yeah. Okay. Interesting. All right. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you very much for your testimony. Thank you, Alain. I appreciate it. Mark Russell, then Heather Acou. Just, welcome. Thank you for providing this opportunity. The Indianapolis Urban League stands up to speak against Senate Bill 235. I just wanted to share the solemnity that we had another school shooting here, in America in Nashville. When you're preparing legislation like that, you need to be mindful. Your actions actually impact students and families. This bill is dangerous. It is exclusive. And it poses the question, how could any educator or student discuss, for example, the fact that Indiana's legislature and governor were controlled by the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s? How could they do that when this bill restricts what can be taught and what can be said in the classroom. It is curious that the listed forbidden use words do not include words or concepts like white supremacy, Odinism, manifest destiny, American exceptionalism, superiority or segregation. The America that I grew up in did not require state authorities to legislatively mandate what is right or wrong, where free speech and debate propelled positive social evolution aimed toward justice. It should be noted, and I would like to quote Doctor. King here, he said, you cannot legislate morality, BUT YOU CAN REGULATE BEHAVIOR. THIS BILL IS DANGEROUS BECAUSE IT IGNORES THE REALITIES OF OUR World TODAY. WE LIVE IN AN INCREASINGLY DIVERSE ENVIRONMENT that requires fluidity and professionalism to deal with people from many backgrounds. Thank you. This bill is unacceptable and is not in the Hoosier tradition. Thank you for your testimony and questions. Thank you. Thank you, Chairwoman Brown. I really appreciate the opportunity to testify. I am here as a representative of the University Alliance For Racial Justice, a statewide organization that advocates for the civil rights of students, staff, and faculty in higher education. I'm I'm also codirector of the Bloomington Multifaith Alliance. I wanna be clear that while I'm currently a faculty member at Indiana University, I'm here strictly as an individual citizen and do not represent my employer. I oppose SB 235 because it limits freedom of speech and freedom of religion as protected by the First Amendment. Although section 4 of this bill would close DEI offices and public universities, section 3 says that these institutions may establish, support, sustain, or employ staff for the purposes of promoting cultural and intellectual diversity. SEA 202, a complex law that went into effect last year, is to the best of my knowledge the first time the phrase intellectual diversity was used in legislation in the state. I'm still not entirely sure what it means, but public universities are required to foster it. One thing I suspect it means is that many Hoosiers would like to have greater recognition of religious diversity and the important role that faith plays in their lives. As a fashion historian, one class I teach is about dress and religion, which focuses on how people of faith use clothing and their bodies to signify their values. One book I frequently ask my students to read is titled Called to the Amish, an unusual book written by a woman who married an Amish man and chose to join the Amish as an adult. It offers a very sincere and personal glimpse into her life as a devoted Christian and is often one of my students' favorites. On page 2, starting on line 15, SB 235 gives a list of words that would be banned from programming on cultural and intellectual diversity. Limiting free speech is contrary to the first amendment, but I want to give you an example of using one of these words in context. Allyship, for example, means looking out for the rights and needs of a group you do not personally belong to. I can be a good ally to the Amish without being Amish myself. That seems like something Hoosiers should be proud to do. If you must pass some version of this bill, then I would strongly urge you to strike this list of banned words. Universities are places for learning and not policing. Thank you for your consideration. Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. Okay. Mhmm. Okay. Go right ahead. Alright. I'm doctor Gwen Kelly, and I'm the Indiana State Education Chair for the NAACP. And as I've said here, I was able to pass out my original testimony, but I wanted to do a shift. When I worked on my dissertation on culturally responsive practices, there was a connection between health and what was going on with cultural competency and how it shifted over to education. And there are concerns in the health community that African Americans do not receive equitable treatment all the time. With maternal health, it's 3 times more likely women are likely to die. I personally have stories about my family. I went to a dermatologist and the treatment I got was different for African Americans than it was for the effect was. And they didn't tell me that until after I was suffering from the process. I remember the incident when I was shocked because a dietitian was so surprised that I asked intelligent questions about what I could eat and what my husband needed to eat because he was diabetic. I was also, offended when I heard that my niece was supposed to get a shot a cortisone shot. And her provider said, you can't have that shot. You don't have insurance. And so there are things that need to be taken care of. Now, back to the bill itself. There is a connection all the things that are listed here that are going to happen are going to impact education. The definitions and no DEI audits, no spending on DEI offices, no programming, no hiring consultants who are teaching and training and banning these words. And this health issue is now rippling down into every aspect of education. There are laws already that are on the books that are codes connected to culturally responsive practices. And all those things are will they have to be changed now? There was a commission in 2009. Doctor. Skiba was here. He was one of the commissioners about vulnerable youth population. And one of the findings was that we need to have more teachers of color. And a bill was passed because of that. And so, we've got to as you all think about this, the Department of Ed has to think seriously about how they're going to make recommendations on the laws that are already made and what they're going to do to help guide what this really means. Let me close with my final statement that was on here. Let's reject the fear and embrace the truth. Only by addressing systemic issues head on can we create a future that works for all. The NAACP opposes Senate Bill 325289. We urge you not to pass either one of them. Instead, let's consider positive ways to prevent the harmful implications for all vulnerable youth and employees of our state. We continue to refine and implement the NAACP Indiana Black Academic Excellence Plan found on the Indianapolis website with an emphasis on guaranteeing that real merit, excellence, and innovation is ensured for our students of color and all of those who work to achieve equitable gains for them. I ask that my testimony be considered with both 235 and 289. Thank you. Thank you very much for your testimony. Any questions? Thank you very much. Madam chair, madam chair, Mr. Wally is not available. That is why I'm rising. But the African American Coalition of Indianapolis, which is more than 20 black organizations, opposes the bill as well. Thank you. Fine. I appreciate it. Chris Paulson is next. And then on deck, the people who spoke, you can get up, say I what you who you represent and oppose. I'm sorry, just give me 2 secs. That's Sandy Washburn, Russ Skiba, Gerald Blakely, Chris Daley, Claire Wildbeck Nolan. Just literally stand up. I'll give you the courtesy of saying who you represent and I assume you still oppose. Thank you. Good evening, members of the committee. I'm here to my name is Chris Paulson, and I'm the CEO of IYG, formerly known as Indiana Youth Group, Indiana's largest serving LGBTQ youth organization, where we serve youth and young adults and their straight ally friends. I'm here to express our concern about some of the language in the bill before you, and I'll keep my comments brief. The young people we serve experience homelessness, abuse and neglect at far higher rates than other youth, often due to rejection at home. They need to be able to access services from providers who they can trust to understand their unique needs. IYG was able to house over 100 young people experiencing housing insecurity in 2024 just in our Indianapolis location. Our locations in Evansville, Columbus, Northwest Indiana, and Crawfordsville, the story is pretty much the same. These young people have been told, often by their own families, that something's wrong with them, that they don't deserve the basic care and support that other youth receive because they are LGBTQ. According to my reading, this bill could chill the funding of any organization who even takes the most moderate position that these youth deserve to be valued for exactly who they are and deserve the same access to the most basic and vital supports as their peers. I hope that you will consider working on this language to make it possible for organizations who receive state funding to continue to provide basic, Chris Daly, ACLU respectfully ask you to vote no. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else who's already testified in the previous bill? Going once. Hi. Actually, Russ Skiba from, University of Alliance for Racial Justice Fund actually was asked by, Pastor David Green, president of the Concerned Clergy of Indianapolis, to present his testimony. Would that be allowed? Sure. Go ahead. Okay. Thanks. Under 2 minutes. I hope so. No, it will be. Okay. I'll call him if it goes over 2 minutes. I'll call him and ask what he wants me to have. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no SB 235. This bill which seeks to curtail diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives is not only harmful but also antithetical to the values of fairness, dignity and justice that we hold dear. As a black pastor and community advocate, I am compelled to speak against this mean spirited legislation. SB235's restriction on DEI initiatives diminish our collective ability to address the inequities that have long plagued marginalized communities. It sends a chilling message that diversity is unwelcome, equity is unnecessary and inclusion is unimportant. This bill also jeopardizes critical programs like the William A. Crawford minority teacher scholarship, which supports minority students pursuing careers in education. Eliminating or eliminating the scholarship would worsen Indiana's shortage of diverse educators and deny opportunities for students who rely on this program to achieve their dreams of becoming teachers. At a time when representation is in the classroom is essential, SB 235 would do irreparable harm to our state's educational system. The concerned clergy of Indianapolis believes that diversity is a strength, not a threat. Our faith teaches us to embrace the full tapestry of humanity, recognizing that every individual is created in the image of God. Limiting DEI initiatives is not only unjust, it is a moral failure that betrays our shared responsibility to uplift all people. SB 235 also risks the progress we have made in ensuring equitable access to education and healthcare by imposing restrictions on state agencies and educational institutions. This bill undermines efforts to train culturally competent professionals and address the needs of Indiana's diverse population. We urge the General Assembly to consider the real consequences of this legislation on communities across the state. SB 235 is not the path forward. It is a step back into division and inequity. Let us move forward together in the spirit of justice, fairness, and unity. The concerned clergy of Indianapolis calls on all who value these principles to join us in opposing this harmful bill. Together, we can ensure that Indiana remains a place where diversity is celebrated, equity is pursued and inclusion is a reality for all. Thank you. All right. Thank you very much. That's our last witness. Any questions? All right. So we have opportunity. We have an amended bill. We have opportunity for discussion. Yes, Senator? Oh, I'm sorry. Totally forgot about Senator Johnson. I did. I did. I'm not quite sure. It quick, senator Johnson. Thank you for the madam chair, do I have permission? Okay. I just wanna make sure, you know, don't wanna get on your bad side. We're already past quick, though. So you already Alright. Doctor Johnson, you and I have had conversations about these things. So this is not a gotcha moment. Page 3, line 15 through 17. What do you mean by this statement when you say nothing is except this section prohibits consideration of bonafide qualiface, qualifications based on sex that are reasonably necessary to normal operation of government functions? I mean, on its face, it's what if there's an opportunity where there's a need for that, then that's what it's gonna allow for. I can't give you a specific example just reading through with some legal recommendations, those kind of things. That's why that was there. I mean, I understand I'm sitting in front of a bunch of lawyers. I'm not gonna tease out. I'm not gonna use it as an excuse. I I got to play contract lawyer and health committee today. So, I dabbled a little bit, but, I'm not gonna tease out the exact specifics of that for you. Well, it says on sex. So you you only picked one particular thing, and it's sex. It doesn't cover race. Couldn't race a certain race of person be reasonably necessary to normal operations of government functions? Couldn't I mean, you pick sex. I didn't. So there had to be a reason. Right? And and my understanding is the reason was there to comply with current regulations and guidelines. I think they're at the Federal law, but don't quote me on that. And so that's where I'm gonna be with that right now. I can follow-up with you. Alright. But that's my understanding. Page 4, lines 9 and 10, a state educational institution may not conduct internal DEI audits or engage DEI consultants. First of all, that hurts because I am a DEI consultant. Alright? That hurts. I won't tell you why. I put it in the bill then. Yes. There's no conflict of interest. He's eliminating it and I think it's every absolutely necessary. You're welcome. But we don't just do educational institutions and thank God we don't regulate private industry. But with this internal audit, why why would you want to restrict internal audits on, for example, racial diversity on campus, religious diversity on campus, gender diversity on campus. Why would you wanna stop that? No. I think you're you're kind of going a step too far. We're looking at this specific DEI provision and pushing down whether they're meeting the DEI program itself audits. Right? But that's what the DEI audits are. DEI audits, okay, are gathering information. For example, a DE audit DEI audit of the medical school admissions could look at the ethnic makeup of the students that are in the upcoming class, whether or not they come from certain backgrounds. Those are all conduct could be done conducted through a DEI audit. So I'm just wondering what you meant by DEI audit. The consultant part, I make it very clear. I I think, first of all, I think that's gonna act as a restraint of trade. I've never seen us say you can't hire a certain group of individuals outside. I think you're you're treading on constitutional rights there. But the DEI audits, I don't understand why you don't want to have that information. And I don't think the way the bill is now that you can't publish statistics or I don't think that's what it what it's saying as far as your enrollment statistics and those kind of things. I don't think But what is a DEI audit? It's my understanding is the way that you would look through to see how your DEI is being implemented and those kind of things. That's what or if you're meeting your DEI stand Right. That's why I've had it implemented in the the locations that I've been in. And I I mean, I'm I don't not involved with the IU faculty to the point that I see that side of it Okay. The DEI office, but that's my understanding. Okay. That that's that's understandable. But I think if the audit part, you might wanna to on page 7, any board that issues a state required health related professionals license certification registration or permit may not use DEI material or require DEI training as part of their license or certificate process. So in the health profession, you don't want any training, licensing, certification, registration as part of their licensing. So they couldn't say, for example, instead of getting your I don't know what your c your what what do you call you guys' continued education? CME, continued medical education. CME, you can't get DEI training as part of that. Yeah. The current way that they're really the DEI training is very manipulative, and it it's just discrimin or it teaches discrimination essentially the way it's done now. So I know you and I Johnson. You and I are gonna get a fight on this. Doctor Johnson, I'm not gonna argue that point with you. We not have that conversation. You're talking to a DEI consultant. There is nothing discriminatory. I just get And I'm gonna throw it back at you that you're talking to a physician who has training and You've been through a DIEDI training? Oh, my. Yes. Yes. And what did they teach you that was discriminatory? Treating people differently based on race. You don't think that's necessary in a medical profession? I treat every patient in front of me as an individual. Doctor Johnson, it's called cultural competency. If you have a black patient versus a white patient, you think you can treat them the same and that medical outcomes will be the same? I didn't say treat them the same. I said treat them as an individual. That's very that's very different. I understand. But I treat you as an individual. I treat him as an individual. That's the way that we practice. Doctor Johnson, I'm not trying to doubt. I I think I like your theory on treating me as an individual. Please accept the fact that I like that mindset. But please understand that if I'm ever in front of you as a patient, recognize the first fact when I walk in the door, which is that I am a person of color. And there are certain things that I deal with in the medical profession being a person of color that you need to understand. I'm not saying you did it or anything else. We talked about this in the hallway. My mother, god rest her soul, I had to move her doctor because he thought that she could adhere to pain better than anybody else because of his cultural thoughts about it. We we I I I'd like what you're saying. I really do. But, please, I'm not trying to tell you that you can't have DEI training, But I just don't want you to misconstrue cultural competency with DEI because they're 2 separate matters. And I think that's what you're because you said treating me different. That's cultural competency. And so when you say it is not part DEI training is not part of the license, you don't want any kind of DEI training to be a part of a medical license or even renewal. Right? Correct. Okay. Now the board you go so far as in here. You say the board cannot conduct the internal DE audits or engage in the so not not just a university, but the board that license people, so the professional licensing agency, right, cannot do DE audits or engage DEI consultants. Correct. Why? It's not necessary. It doesn't help the licensing process at all. How how do you come up with that theory? I'm that that's tell me how that does it doesn't help. I'm not gonna say here you and I are gonna disagree on this. I but doctor Johnson No. We're gonna disagree on it. And I understand that. I wanna be respectful. And it really gets to the point that you and I fundamentally disagree on this idea. No. This no. Can I just intervene? I do think the point has been made, though. Senator Johnson has said that he has had to take DI training as a physician, and he doesn't think it is, it's not helpful. Madam chair madam chair. So you you want him to try I I think he's answered twice. He's gonna agree to disagree on this. I did. I'll give you one more chance to ask pass the question. I don't even need to ask the question. If you're gonna make a statement in the public, in the committee, all I asked was why he had the theory. I don't think that's a if you have a theory, all I want to do is understand. That's all I'm asking for was clarification, madam chair. If you don't have that clarification, I apologize for asking the question. But you said it doesn't help. And all I did was ask you why you didn't think it helped. If you're offended by that, I apologize. I am trying to get to the bottom of what you're trying to get in the bill. I apologize, madam chair. Doctor. Johnson, I have no more questions for you. If you want to talk to me about it, my door is open. I think we're going to we might disagree on this, but daggone it, we should also respect each other. Okay? You're good, Senator Taylor. I mean, I'll sit and we'll talk with you about it. It's it's been a long day, and I'm not gonna use it as an excuse. I I got a lot of whys. You've heard a lot of it. Actually, doctor Buzinski and doctor Friedman voiced some of that already, but, you know, sorry. Thank you, Madam Chair. Doctor. Johnson, I was gonna ask about the same same section, but I had a different question about, I believe it was page 3, line 15 is the one that, senator Taylor had had inquired about. Nothing in this section prohibits consideration of a bona fide qualification based on sex that are reasonably necessary to the normal operation of government functions. I'm assuming this pertains to essentially, you know, if you have the women's prison, you then you want female COs. This is a situation in which that would be a bona fide qualification, correct? I mean, with that question, I sought legal advice on this bill, right? And so I would think that just asking me that question, I think that's a reasonable thing. I think that's what we're getting to the heart of. And you and I had a conversation a little bit about this about I appreciate that. Yeah. And it's the thing that I brought up, like the idea that we couldn't hire teachers or we couldn't look at, for example, the race of a teacher or the culture of a teacher or the ethnicity of a teacher that was in need or was needed in specific areas and essentially to fill a need of representation amongst the student body. You seem to understand that. You know, like conceptually, you know, what you end up having is a situation in which you're going to have potentially behavioral problems, disconnect between administration and teaching staff and the kids. Would you consider including as part of this other aspects that would account for that? I mean, I'll be honest. I have trouble answering that right now. It's probably not ideal to make a bunch of little carve outs in this for those type of situations. You know, I appreciate you being open and talking with me about it. I really do. And I get some of those scenarios. I really do. And I also push back a little bit that you need a very specific thing for every, you know someone used the Amish earlier. Right? Like, that's my family heritage. I don't know that I need somebody Amish to understand my kids' background and our family. I don't know that I need that. Okay? So I'm just gonna use my example as a particular thing there. Yeah. I mean, I think that there's, you know, obviously a big difference between when you have, you know, predominantly, you know, predominantly black neighborhood that, you know, has only all white teachers, and you have an issue with and I've gone over this. I don't want to beat the dead horse on it. I think you understand the problem that I think needs to be addressed in the bill as far as how that could actually hamper really the learning experience, I think, for kids. I think there's disciplinary issues where people think that, well, this person's being disrespectful, but essentially they may be using terms that are culturally much more popular in certain cultures or not. I think the latest example was you had there was a debate. I can't remember what it was, it was Congress or something and they used the term child. And it was a big, big issue because they said, well, you I'm not a child. Well, that wasn't the term that was being used. It was child. And I think that this is the thing that I'm talking about is you have disconnect in the way that people discuss, the people the way that people relate. And it turns to, well, that person is being disrespectful. That person is being that person is a problem. And now this kid is essentially being disciplined. And they're put down that road. This is the bad kid. So I appreciate you taking the time to talk to me about it. And I think that is something we have to fix with this. Some of the other things, so on page 2, there's a list of things here that are prohibited, in lines 15 down through 29. And it talks about that there's a prohibition it's identifying these as DEI and then there's the prohibition that applies later in the bill. But it talks about bias, cultural appropriation, allyship, transgender ideology, microaggressions, the list goes on. Where did this list come from? I mean, this list came together as common things that were included in DEI training and discussions. I mean, that's really where the genesis of the list. So there was a person that had testified earlier that it stated we need to have conversations. They could be the one person that stood up and had this conversation and it might have not been popular. But the point that she was making was Doctor. Brzezinski, I believe it was. I can't remember the last name. But ultimately, the point that she was saying was you need those people that stand up and say, hey, this is an issue. And I know that it may not be popular, but you need that in the academic arena. Because when you have essentially a homogenized, you know, baby level of education, cultural experiences, you need that in order to grow as a society. Correct? I mean, you'd say that that's fair. I mean, I mean, debate's a good thing. Right? I'm not gonna work having that right now. Right? But I don't think that to the point of the bill, that shouldn't be the official policy or the top line policy of an institution. And I I agree. I mean, I think that what this isn't saying is a policy. It's just saying that it, that there's an official position or a particular opinion referencing, you know, unconscious or implicit. And then it's got these things some of these things, I don't know what they are. I mean, to be honest, I I mean, do you know what are neoPRONS? So that would be like the theythem kind of discussion. So neo neolistic pronouns is that that combination of those, and that's what that that really means. So the example would be using theythem. We're talking about the, you know, the top line agency position on these type of things, right? Okay. I've got a question though. So one time here though is and this one stands out for me is is anti racism. You know, this is something that we've talked about quite a bit today. So it would be you couldn't have a position. You couldn't have any state agency or any, anything that would apply under the list that's here under the bill that could state, hey, you know, we believe in anti racism. We essentially are so nondiscriminative that we obviously we don't we believe that racism is a bad thing and that we think that everybody I mean, that seems to go against the intent of the bills if you're prohibiting anti racism. No. When you look at anti racism is that big picture, you know, really that systemic racism discussions is where that stems from. Right? And so I don't think that's contradictory to the bill at all. Well, you're not talking about systemic racism. You're just saying anti racism. That's what's in the bill is you're talking about specifically like you can't be anti racist, You know, and that that that is what bothers me, I think, because the way that I think we've all grown up is that racism is bad, right? You know, like, across the board, it's we should not be treating people, you know, poorly. You and I will fight that together. And and so that's why I don't know why you put this in here, though. Like, why is that in here if it's you know, you and I agree on that. Why is it in here? Well, when you're talking anti racism is really that range of ideas on the opposition of systemic racism, and we can talk about that term in itself, but that's why that's in there. But I I mean, I feel comfortable more comfortable if it was a little bit more specific as to what you were talking about. But I don't I don't read it that way. And I I don't think that other people will see that either. I think that what the conversation we had earlier where you have individuals that, they'll fear essentially running afoul of this and getting a $250,000 violation by the attorney general essentially by essentially saying, well, oh, the racism is bad. We shouldn't be talking about that. Well, now I've violated the law because it's anti racism. So I do think that this bill definitely needs a lot of work on that. You know, because I know that that's not what your intent is. So, all right. So looking at So in looking at it on page 5, chapter 3.5 that's listed or starts around line 24. I was wondering I mean is there a precedent that we have for mandates for admission? Because that's essentially what I think that this is establishing. Let me re so a precedent for mandates on how admission is done Yeah. Can you figure that out a little bit? Yeah. Yeah. I see. That's a fair the fair Yeah. So there there are some requirements over overriding admission, but that's the concern is that we want a standard admission process. Right? We don't wanna we don't wanna sway that one way or another. It changed for 1 person or another. I I've sat on a university admission board, and we we fought off some of the stuff in Michigan State when I was there. And and it was a tough discussion. It really was. And, so I I understand the debate back and forth and. But I think what's kind of related to this particular question and this particular topic goes back to discussion that you and Senator Taylor had about treating individuals as individuals, patients as individuals. And he had brought up, well, if you treat a black person and you treat a white person the exact same, they're not going to necessarily have the same outcomes. And that you had stated the response to that was that you would treat them as individuals. But I think in order to understand how to treat them as individuals, you have to understand the individual, right? You have to understand what their background is, what their, you know, you have to understand aspects about them, right? But but are you gonna say race is the most important aspect of that? No. Right? So I take when we did admissions, we did a holistic approach. I think doctor Friedman used that terminology. That's yeah. That's my next question. We're not saying the standardized test is the only thing. The the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the individual is different, right? It's not as if everybody that comes in is a homogeneous human being that has no you know, that all has the exact same background and the exact same blood type and the exact same everything else. You have to treat them as such. You have to treat them you know, you have to understand, you know, dietary things. You have to understand cultural things. You have to understand aspects about them, right? Like these are things that you learn about and you take into account when you're treating them, correct? Sure. So when we're talking about admissions, the same thing with the idea like we were throwing this term around holistic. And I felt that Doctor. Friedman was kind of struggling in identifying that without identifying the fact that you had individuals that had to take you had to take into account you know, their background. You had to take into account their culture. You had to take in account, you know, those aspects that made them, you know, that made them, you know, a viable candidate or a special candidate that they wanted to that schools wanted to bring into their student body. Right? I mean, you have to take those things into account. It's in some way or shape or another. If you just say it's holistic, I think you're setting up admissions to essentially say, I understand that that's what you kind of want. You want that in there. But ultimately, we're barred from that. And I think that that's what you my concern is that your legislation, it goes beyond what you think it does. So I mean, do you understand where I'm coming from? Yes. And I've talked to the universities about this piece and that's how I started the conversation hours ago. So it's one of those areas in the bill that we'll work on a little bit. I don't think on principle, I think you and I are going to differ there. I think on the application of the language, we need to work on that a little bit better. I've made the commitment already to the universities if we don't get it right and they're not comfortable with where we're at. I mean, I'll be the judge of that to some extent where I go with the language, but I really want them to be comfortable with where we land on the language and I've made that commitment already. I appreciate it. I mean, they're going to be the ones that are much more to me that we're talking be a year before this committee, but I think that's probably the more important conversation. And I've recognized that already, and I hope every one of them stood up here. I was sitting here listening that they I've sat and listened and and, taken every bit of that to heart. And actually, I mean, I very, very much mean what I say. And I hope I have the respect of this committee to understand that I wouldn't I would not backtrack on that. Even Senator Taylor, I hope you understand that that I'm going to get that part right. And if it's not, it won't be in the bill. Do we have any senator Freeman? Doctor Johnson, I've sat here for many hours and I've not said a word. And that's a challenge for me sometimes. I no longer serve on the Senate Education Committee, and so everybody knows they've been done for about 3 hours by now. I do sit on that committee, senator. Bless you. There's not enough yeah. Let me ask you this. I read your bill, and I was frankly surprised, maybe not surprised, but the opposition to this, I don't know if I understand it. I read your bill and the word merit comes to my mind. Are you trying to get us to a merit based system? Yeah. We wanna we want that to be the standard. I think the governor talked about that fairly well. I don't want there to be any question about when somebody goes to these medical school as example, because I can use that, that they're qualified to be there. So the story as I understand it, Ronald Reagan was shot. He gets to the hospital. The man looks up at his doctor and says, I pray you're a Republican. And as I understand it, the doctor responds and says, Mr. President, today we're all Republicans. Doctor. Johnson, when you have somebody in front of you as an ER doc that's got a gunshot wound that's dying from a lung that's not taking oxygen and other things, does it matter if they're white or black? No. And I will tell you perfect examples. Even everybody in here has ran for office that I've had people that have protested me being a state senator. I've had to take care of them. And we set that aside to take care of everybody the best way I possibly can. Does it matter if they're a man or a woman? No. Does it matter what they wanna be identified as or called or any of that? No. And I pray to God the day that I'm laying on a table and I look up at somebody and say, whatever I say and try to be funny and lighten the mood and put a doctor at ease. I pray to God, all I ask is somebody knows what they're doing. And no offense to the docs. I don't want the person that this is their first case. I want the doctor that this is their 2 1000th case and they're gonna say, I got you and I'll see you in 3 hours. So thanks for doing what you're doing. Committee, you've been actually all very good. I appreciate the questions and the intense dialogue. It's always helpful to do that now. We are voting this bill today. So I know I don't usually like to move them out of committee. But as I mentioned in the beginning, we're not meeting this week, so I'll bet education is, so there's that. And, I want to make sure that Senator Johnson had enough time to work on the amendment, which I know he has promised to do. So with that, we have an amended bill. What's the role of the committee? Thank you very much. Please call the roll. Senator Alexander? Yes. Senator Buck? Aye. Senator Freeman? Aye. Senator Carrasco? Aye. Senator Glick? Aye. Senator Cook? Aye. Senator Clark? Aye. Senator Randolph? Senator Pohl? Briefly explain my vote. Senator Johnson, I think you're tact here in 1, already doing an amendment. 2, taking into consideration the universities. I think that's a major concern for them. And 3, having the conversations with us. I think that that works or that is really great. There are definitely things in here that I really do truly want to make sure that we can't really realize how actually impactful that we're going to be and that we're going to actually try and work on them and get them fixed. As a result though, obviously I can't support the bill at this point in the way shape in way and shape that it is currently. So with that, I vote no. Senator Taylor. Thank you, madam chairwoman. If I could have a minute, 60 seconds. Yes, sir. Thank you. Don't wanna hold senator Freeman from getting to his family. Well, it's Senator Freeman that I'm concerned about right now. I looked up some startling statistics to just enlighten some people. 92% of medical students at IU Medical School are Caucasian. 99% of law students in Indiana are Caucasian. If you break it down to social work and other areas, I would say it'd be in the eighties. And so I sit back and I ask myself the question. If DEI is so bad that we can't can take into consideration race, gender, all those things, Why are numbers so dismal? Are is it just that minority students can't be qualified to get into medical school? Is that what it is? No. No. No. It's there's minority students who can't get into law school. Is that what it is? You represent 92% of something. I think you would be very happy with that. But we bring up pieces of legislation that takes a step back and says, we're gonna standardize a test. Doctor Johnson, I know you don't intend to keep that in there, but let me just give you a little history. The reason why SATs became optional is because there was a study done that said standardized tests don't, first of all, fairly equate to success in college and, second, has a detrimental effect on students who are from impoverished neighborhoods. That's why the university changes their standards for SATs. You wanna take a step back and now make it a requirement. My god. I I don't know how you guys feel about me, but I went to IU McKinney Law School. I didn't graduate top of my class. I had a 3.3 GPA coming out of high school. My mom was, like I said, the youngest child to a sharecropper. I could have stopped at undergrad and I would have been successful. But I pushed forward and I did what I thought was important. And I'm gonna tell you, if it wasn't for DEI, I wouldn't be married to my wife who happens to be Caucasian. I wouldn't have the relationships that I have with most of you because I live with somebody who looks like you. I live with her. Her family is very important to me. We better open our eyes and recognize the importance of putting all of us in the same room and respecting everybody else. This is going to set us back, Doctor. Johnson. You might have your theory. I have mine. I ain't criticizing yours. But this is gonna set us back years because it's gonna take a tool that forces us to react and talk to each other. It's gonna take it out of the discussion. So you guys go on I I this is what I will promise you. I won't talk about this bill on the floor because I think it's a waste of time. I think this is a national thing. I don't think you wrote this. I think this came I think you go to other states and you find the same language. Because I know what's going on. And somebody needs to call it out, okay? We here well, what hurts me the most is that if you look at any of the start of DEI, the benefit did not endure to just one group. Forcing us to learn about each other and to listen to the struggles that we've all gone through is beneficial to everyone. And we are taking a step back here. And I hope we don't end up putting ourselves in a position where we regret this. I'm going to vote no, but I'm done. I'm off my soapbox. Chair Brown. Chair votes yes. 8 to 2.