CHEYENNE—The Senate voted Monday to strip an amendment to a bill that law enforcement officers say will “handcuff” them and diminish their ability to address crime.
The amendment aimed to address law enforcement concerns about House Bill 130. But the Senate’s move on Monday restored the bill to a version that Wyoming law enforcement has repeatedly cautioned would create legal ambiguity that could put officers and agencies at risk for litigation, threaten federal partnerships and ultimately hamper efforts to enforce laws.
House Bill 130, sponsored by Evanston Republican Rep. Robert Wharff, also cleared its second reading Tuesday in the Senate.
Last week, about 20 law enforcement officers showed up to a committee meeting at the Capitol to speak against proposed changes to Wyoming’s Second Amendment Protection Act (SAPA), a statute that restricts enforcement of federal gun laws. The officers told lawmakers on the Senate Revenue Committee that the bill would expose them to major legal risk and hamper their efforts to keep the public safe.
Meanwhile, HB 130 supporters say the bill will protect people from a potentially overzealous federal government intent on confiscating Wyomingites’ guns.
After listening to officers’ testimony, the committee adopted substantial amendments to the bill that addressed some of their concerns. Those changes included deleting a section of the bill that allows anyone, and not just the state, to take legal action against alleged SAPA violations.
Law enforcement officials told WyoFile that those changes would make the measure “workable” for law enforcement.
But on Monday, Sen. Troy McKeown, a Gillette Republican who chairs the Senate Revenue Committee, urged his colleagues on the floor to kill the amendment, which he described as “kind of damaging in a couple places.”
Lander Republican Sen. Cale Case, the Senate Revenue Committee member who had proposed the amendment, stood after McKeown to defend it.
“This amendment came from a group of individuals wearing badges, a very large group of individuals wearing badges, that came to our committee meeting,” Case began.
The officers had argued, Case recounted, that the changes “would provide clarity” when dealing with situations that often aren’t “black and white.”
The Senate Revenue Committee hadn’t adopted all the changes to HB 130 that law enforcement representatives had asked for. “Their proposed amendment was even more restrictive,” Case said. “We took this and we pared down their amendment.”
House Bill 130 is identical to another bill, Senate File 101, that the Senate had already pushed through its chamber. Introducing the same measure in both chambers is a strategy to help get a bill across the finish line in the sponsors’ desired form. The bills are the same as a measure that Gov. Mark Gordon vetoed last year.
Senate President Bo Biteman, R-Ranchester, sponsored the Senate version of the bill. He urged his Senate colleagues on Monday to change HB 130 so it would look like the Senate version that the upper chamber had already approved.
SF 101 must move through a vote in the House today, or it will die because of a procedural deadline. It’s at the bottom of the list for consideration in the House.
“The standing committee amendment muddies the waters, so that’s why I’m urging you to vote no on the standing committee amendment,” Biteman told his Senate colleagues.
The Senate ultimately killed the law enforcement-backed amendment in a voice vote and adopted an amendment brought by Biteman that aligns HB 130 with SF 101.
In its second Senate vote on Tuesday, the upper chamber also adopted an amendment that allows courts to award damages to defendants in lawsuits they deem to be frivolous.
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In a round about way it appears this bill removes qualified immunity from LEOs.
A good thing.
Exactly. Authority without accountability is tyranny.