campaigns.2026.yml

contact:
  name: General legislative contact
  sentence_name: general legislative contact
  members_file: data/alabama/2026.csv
  tips: ""
  notes: {}

  reps:
    - ocdid: theirs
      ocdid_prefix: "ocd-division/country:us/state:al/sldl:"
      click_tag: their-sldl
      no_rep_note: state House of Representatives
      rep_note: no
      prelude: Your state representative is

    - ocdid: theirs
      ocdid_prefix: "ocd-division/country:us/state:al/sldu:"
      click_tag: their-sldu
      no_rep_note: state Senate
      rep_note: no
      prelude: Your state senator is


hb23:
  name: "House Bill 23 / Senate Bill 331 (Don't Say Gay)"
  sentence_name: HB23/SB331
  members_file: data/alabama/2026.csv
  write_url: https://actionnetwork.org/letters/altrac-hb23-2026/
  notes:
    house-edpol: |
      <strong>Your representative is on the House Education Policy committee,</strong> which votes on this bill before the full House does. That means they have an early opportunity to block the bill, so it's especially important that <em>you</em> make a call!

  tips: |
    <h2 id="talking-points-and-tips">Talking points and tips</h2>
    <p><strong>House Bill 23 and Senate Bill 331</strong> would expand the current prohibition
    on discussing queer topics in schools so that it would now restrict
    pre-kindergarten all the way through grade 12. These bills would also ban Pride
    insignias in public school classrooms.</p>
    <ul>
    <li>Please call <strong>your state Senator</strong> and tell them
    that you oppose HB23/SB331. Call your rep in the house too, if you have time.<br />
    </li>
    <li>At this stage, and generally when talking to Republican legislators,
    it will be more effective to talk about how the legislature has more
    important priorities, and that the bill is poorly written, has
    unintended consequences, and may drive business away from the state —
    rather than directly talking about the impacts on transgender people.
    See the talking points below for some ideas.<br />
    </li>
    <li>Sharing your personal story is also effective. If you’re queer,
    share what having representation would have meant to you as a kid. If
    you’re straight, or cis, talk about how you couldn’t have been
    “influenced” to “turn” gay or trans by any amount of pride flags in your
    school.<br />
    </li>
    <li>Don’t be discouraged if you reach voicemail — leave a message. Every
    call counts.<br />
    </li>
    <li>It may be difficult, but be direct and polite. If it helps, you can
    write down what you want to say beforehand.</li>
    </ul>
    <p>If you already know what the bill is about and what you want to talk
    about, <a href="#reps">skip these tips</a>. Otherwise, <strong>skim
    these bullet points, pick a few that resonate with you, and be prepared
    to expand on them if necessary.</strong></p>
    <ul>
    <li><strong>Last year the bill received a friendly amendment at the
    request of the Department of Education that limited it to 8th grade and
    below. Why is that not present in this year’s bill?</strong><br />
    </li>
    <li><strong>The bill doesn’t provide enough information for teachers to
    actually follow it.</strong>
    <ul>
    <li>It states that “classroom discussion…or instruction” about “sexual
    orientation or gender identity” is disallowed if it is not “age
    appropriate or developmentally appropriate…in accordance with state
    standards.” Yet the Alabama Academic Standards don’t say anything about
    sexual orientation or gender identity.<br />
    </li>
    <li>The bill’s vague wording disallows discussion of even heterosexual
    relationships, as “heterosexual” is also a sexual orientation.<br />
    </li>
    <li>While “sex” has been legally defined in last year’s SB79, “gender
    identity” is not, in this or any other bill. What is meant by “gender
    identity”? If there’s no definition for it, how are teachers supposed to
    know what they’re not supposed to mention? There would be no way for a
    teacher to know if they were breaking the law.<br />
    </li>
    <li>To emphasize Teddy Roosevelt’s rugged masculine hobby of hunting or
    Marilyn Monroe’s feminine wiles would arguably be a discussion of gender
    identity and therefore forbidden. Must we talk about the fact that a
    person produces sperm or ova instead of talking about their gendered
    attributes?<br />
    </li>
    </ul></li>
    <li><strong>What effect would this bill have on textbooks, materials,
    lesson plans, etc?</strong>
    <ul>
    <li>Do schools need to throw out textbooks that contain even the
    slightest mention of sexual orientation or gender identity?<br />
    </li>
    <li>If so, where would the money for new materials come from?<br />
    </li>
    <li>Would the mere mention of queer historical figures, such as Alan
    Turing or Oscar Wilde, be disallowed?<br />
    </li>
    <li>How would students of queer families be expected to fulfill a
    genealogy assignment? According to this bill, displaying a student’s
    family tree project with two same-gender parents would be prohibited,
    but singling out a student’s work in this way is clearly a violation of
    that student’s right to free expression – and a denunciation of their
    lived experience.<br />
    </li>
    </ul></li>
    <li><strong>It sets the state up for litigation based on employment
    discrimination.</strong>
    <ul>
    <li>The legal implications these bills have for schools would discourage them
    from hiring teachers who are gay or transgender.<br />
    </li>
    </ul></li>
    <li><strong>The bill’s sponsors claim it only affects classroom
    instruction, but Section 1(b) specifically restricts the display of
    anything relating to orientation or gender “in a classroom of a preK-12
    public school,” which could include rainbows in any form.</strong><br />
    </li>
    <li><strong>Teachers and employees are sometimes required by the First
    Amendment and federal law to display a pride flag or symbol,
    particularly when they are making announcements on behalf of a student
    organization or functioning as a faculty advisor.</strong>
    <ul>
    <li>The ability for students to make speech using these resources is
    protected by the Constitution and the Equal Access Act of 1984. This law
    puts teachers in a position where they have to choose between violating
    federal law or violating state law. Sometimes institutional speech
    <em>is</em> student speech.<br />
    </li>
    <li>If a student assignment or artwork contains a pride flag, is it
    legal for the teacher to collect, grade, return, or display that in a
    classroom with other assignments? How would we know if that pride flag
    was the teacher’s speech or the student’s speech? There is no way to
    contextually determine why a teacher is near a pride flag and even being
    around one would be a presumption of guilt.<br />
    </li>
    </ul></li>
    <li><strong>This bill holds charter schools that receive public funding
    to a different standard.</strong>
    <ul>
    <li>Why should charter schools be excluded from this legislation? If
    this bill is truly a priority, should it not be applied across the
    educational landscape?<br />
    </li>
    </ul></li>
    <li><strong>The ban on employees displaying flags requires them to take
    down student posted flags, which would then violate Tinker v. Des Moines
    (1969)</strong>
    <ul>
    <li>At what point does leaving a flag up a student displayed constitute
    an employee leaving it up?<br />
    </li>
    </ul></li>
    <li><strong>The bill is vague and overbroad in a way that violates
    Keyishian v. Board of Regents (1967). The bill makes the wearing of even
    a rainbow watch band legally suspicious, which could mean
    anything.</strong>
    <ul>
    <li>New York State required state employees to sign an agreement that
    they would not engage in anything “seditious” and a loyalty oath that
    they were not a member of the Communist Party. The court ruled that this
    was unconstitutional and that mere membership of an organization could
    not be an adequate basis for imposing sanctions, and additionally, that
    “seditious” and “treasonable” were not specific enough. “Sexual
    orientation” and “gender identity” suffer from the same lack of
    specificity and state employees displaying rainbows or whatever the next
    target of the state is will be assumed guilty until proven
    innocent.</li>
    </ul></li>
    </ul>

    <a id="reps">

  reps:
    - ocdid: theirs
      ocdid_prefix: "ocd-division/country:us/state:al/sldu:"
      click_tag: their-sldu
      no_rep_note: state Senate
      rep_note: no
      prelude: Your state senator is

    - ocdid: theirs
      ocdid_prefix: "ocd-division/country:us/state:al/sldl:"
      click_tag: their-sldl
      no_rep_note: state House of Representatives
      rep_note: yes
      prelude: Your state representative is

sb331:
  redirect: hb23
  write_url: https://actionnetwork.org/letters/altrac-hb23-2026/