Disrupting Legislatures

As raised in the debate over the Tennessee three or two, according to your accounting method, the underlying “cause” of the problem was legislators aiding protestors in gaining access to their legislative chambers, seizing effective control by standing up front, megaphone in hand, leading the protestors in chants and violating the rules, not to mention norms, of decorum.

There conduct occurred after the shooting at the Covenant School, certainly a very traumatic event. Their conduct was directed toward the chamber’s consideration of laws that protected gun rights, rather than limited them, for which there was no law was before the lege. They were passionate about their cause, which they viewed as existential, life or death.

In a collateral situation, a Montana legislator, Zooey Zephyr, was similarly expelled from the chamber, although allowed to vote remotely, for using the common rhetoric of transgender activism, that any challenge to the trans ideology meant killing transgenders, eradicating their existence. Zephyr exclaimed that the legislators who supported a law limiting medical sex change measures, what its proponents call “gender affirming heath care,” would have “blood on their hands.”

Earlier this month, as some of those bills moved toward passage in the state capital of Helena, Ms. Zephyr stood on the House floor to tell colleagues that passing a bill to prohibit hormone treatments and surgical care for transgender minors would be “tantamount to torture” and would result in “blood on your hands” for lawmakers who approved it.

The Republican supermajority in the House were angered by her hyperbolic rhetoric, but the next step, much as with Tennessee, pushed them over the top.

The House’s Republican leadership initially responded to the blunt remarks by refusing to recognize Ms. Zephyr in floor discussions. Members of the conservative Montana Freedom Caucus accused Ms. Zephyr of “standing in the middle of the floor encouraging an insurrection” when her supporters, who were protesting noisily from the gallery, were ordered to disperse.

Then on Wednesday, citing violations of decorum, Republicans voted to bar her from the chamber for the rest of the session, which was scheduled to end next week.

Tactical questions aside, as these expulsions were largely ineffective and, rather than end the challenges to the rules and decorum, turned these legislators into national martyrs for those who agreed with and supported their causes, the under-considered aspect involved what might be characterized as a new strategy of disruption to legislative chambers by bringing in outside protestors and seizing control of the chambers in order to turn them into the locus of protest rather than legislatures that perform their function in accordance with rules of order.

Whether one supports the underlying causes of this disruptive legislators, or supports the expulsion or ejection in reaction to their conduct, the question is whether this new tactic of legislative disruption is acceptable and viable. Can legislatures function when its members abide the rules of decorum only when they’re in agreement, but are freed from responsibility for their violation of rules when they are passionate about their cause or their cause is “just” as far as observers are concerned?

The answer seems largely to hinge on whether the cause at stake is one of life or death. No one is disrupting chambers over whether a stop sign should be placed at the corner of First and Main. The issues of gun control and transgender rights are both very “hot” at the moment and extremely controversial. Each of these legislators was part of a significant minority in their legislatures, and likely had inadequate standing to be taken seriously by their fellow legislators. That, of course, is neither unusual nor wrong; the nature of the function is that there will be a majority and a minority, and in a democracy, the majority tends to prevail.

But if the issue is truly existential, then isn’t the decision to take it to the next level, to disrupt and protest, to accuse ones putative colleagues of murder, justified? Is one supposed to stand there and do nothing if they believe that people will die as a product of their inaction? Can’t these legislators be forgiven their extreme actions in light of the passion of their convictions?

Legislatures cannot function if they become battlegrounds beyond the arena of ideas. While each legislator may represent the voice of their constituents, this does not mean they are justified in negating the voices of the constituents of other legislators who are similarly present to do the business of the legislature. Yes, their constituents matter. So too do the constituents of their adversaries in the majority. The minority legislators are no more entitled to thwart the voices of the majority constituents than they are to violate rules whenever things aren’t going their way.

Republican leaders have said that the issue with Ms. Zephyr is not about freedom of speech, but rather the chaos that erupted when her supporters spoke out loudly in the House chambers, chanting, “Let her speak” as Ms. Zephyr held a microphone over her head to capture the cacophony. Police officers eventually cleared the room.

If disruption as a tactic becomes acceptable, then it’s available for any legislator to employ whenever they seek to prevent the legislature from functioning. It could be a majority legislator bringing in protestors to silence someone like Zephyr just as transgender activists came to support Zephyr. It may well be argued that the Republican majority in the Montana legislature was far too sensitive about the rhetoric used, as its absurdly hyperbolic nature might not be persuasive to any rational person. But it also wasn’t likely to make Republican legislators fall to the floor in tears and angst.

But then, should this tactic of disruption become normalized without sanction, will this be the new normal for legislatures such that any legislator can preclude a law they dislike from being enacted simply by bringing in their tribe and chanting until the others walk out? And if it’s wrong, what’s the more effective way to address it than turning violators into national heroes?