Oregon GOP senators are boycotting their jobs to obstruct vote on trans-friendly bill

[icymist]

Republican senators in the Oregon legislature have come up with a novel idea to obstruct a pair of progressive bills sponsored by Democrats addressing gender-affirming healthcare, abortion rights, and gun safety.

...The state senate Republicans’ walkout is denying Democratic leadership a quorum and with it the ability to vote on the two wide-ranging bills.

...Two-thirds of state house and senate members need to be present for the respective chamber to conduct business. Ten Republicans and the senate’s lone independent haven’t shown up for business since Monday.

Republicans are basing their boycott on an obscure 1979 law that requires all legislative summaries to be written in plain English, specifically a score of 60 or higher on the Flesch readability test, which equates to text readable for an 8th or 9th grader.

https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2023/05/oregon-gop-senators-are-boycotting-their-jobs-to-obstruct-vote-on-trans-friendly-bill/

Jay Kuo wrote today in his Substack about how the Oregon Republicans are using this obscure law even though they fully understand what they would be voting on.

...This is quite the position. The Oregon GOP wants us to believe that the laws at issue are too complicated for even its own leaders to vote on. Yet they plainly understand what the law does. I took a look at their own Twitter feed, which was busy blasting these laws before they decided they were too hard to understand. It turns out, the Oregon Senate GOP even tweeted out an oversimplified fact sheet on April 25th about that very law, with their own particular twists on the facts, ostensibly to show that it’s too extreme for most Oregonians.

Read the fact sheet in Jay's article here:
https://statuskuo.substack.com/p/the-oregon-gop-walked-out-because?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=283462&post_id=119489346&isFreemail=true&utm_medium=email