Link.
Searched and didn't see a thread.
Searched and didn't see a thread.
In the newly controlled Democratic House, H.R.1 – meant to signal the new majority's priorities – is an anti-corruption bill that combines election and campaign finance reform, strengthening of voting rights, and matching public funds for small-dollar candidates. In the new 2017 Senate, the GOP-controlled S.1 was a bill, called the "Tax Cuts and Jobs Act," that, among other provisions, cut various forms of corporate taxes.
But in the 2019 GOP-controlled Senate, the first bill to be considered – S.1 – is not designed to protect American workers, bolster U.S. companies, or address the various debates over border security and immigration. It's not a bill to open the government. Instead, according to multiple sources involved in the legislative process, S.1 will be a compendium containing a handful of foreign-policy related measures, a main one of which is a provision, with Florida's GOP Sen. Marco Rubio as a lead sponsor, to defend the Israeli government. The bill is a top legislative priority for AIPAC.
In the previous Congress, that measure was known as S.170, and it gives state and local governments explicit legal authority to boycott any U.S. companies which themselves are participating in a boycott against Israel. As the Intercept reported last month, 26 states now have enacted some version of a law to punish or otherwise sanction entities which participate in or support the boycott of Israel, while similar laws are pending in at least 13 additional states. Rubio's bill is designed to strengthen the legal basis to defend those Israel-protecting laws from constitutional challenge.
Thus far, the two federal courts that have ruled on such bills have declared them to be unconstitutional violations of the First Amendment speech rights of American citizens. "A restriction of one's ability to participate in collective calls to oppose Israel unquestionably burdens the protected expression of companies wishing to engage in such a boycott," U.S. District Court Judge Diane J. Humetewa of Arizona wrote in her decision issuing a preliminary injunction against the law in a case brought last September by the ACLU on behalf of "an attorney who has contracted with the state for the last 12 years to provide legal services on behalf of incarcerated individuals" but who lost his contract to do so after he refused to sign an oath pledging not to boycott Israel.
A similar ruling was issued in January of last year by a Kansas federal judge, who ruled that state's Israel oath law unconstitutional on the ground that "the Supreme Court has held that the First Amendment protects the right to participate in a boycott like the one punished by the Kansas law." In that case, a Mennonite who was a long-time public school teacher lost her independent contract as a school curriculum developer after she followed her church's decision to boycott goods from Israeli companies in the occupied West Bank and thus refused to sign the oath required by Kansas law.
With the seven Democratic co-sponsors, the bill would have the 60 votes it needs to overcome a filibuster. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. – who supported Sen. Cardin's far more draconian bill of last year and is one of the Senate's most reliable AIPAC loyalists – also plans to support the Rubio bill, rather than whip votes against it, sources working on the bill said. Schumer's spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
If the bill does pass the Senate, the major question will be whether the Democratic House – now led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a long-time Israel advocate but also as a supporter of the First Amendment – takes it up and passes it into law.
