In the days leading up to May 8, North Carolina lawmakers worked long days trying to meet a self-imposed deadline: crossover.
Crossover is the day by which all bills that are eligible to be considered for the rest of this year and next year have to “cross over” from one chamber to another. Bills originating in the state House have to make it to the state Senate, and vice versa.
Or else, they’re out (with the exception of appropriations bills, election bills, constitutional amendments and government appointments).
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About a fifth of the 1,700 bills filed this session made the crossover cut. They include legislation cracking down on illegal immigration, boosting gun rights, erasing diversity, equity and inclusion programs in government and education and giving more power to Republican state executives.
All but about a dozen crossover bills were sponsored by Republicans.
Not all Republican bills gained enough support to move forward this session. Some, like bills banning fluoride in water and making North Carolina a Second Amendment sanctuary state, fell short.
However, no bill is completely dead until the legislative session’s final adjournment later this year. Lawmakers often use legislative techniques to get around crossover deadlines, like gutting bills that have made crossover and replacing their language with that of bills that didn’t make it.
Still, the bills that make crossover illustrate the legislature’s priorities for the next two years.
What bills made it?
Conservative priorities have had a good year in Raleigh so far.
Gun bills in particular are making progress. Gun control activists are particularly concerned about two bills that made crossover: one creating lifetime concealed carry permits (the current permits last five years) and another eliminating the permit requirement to conceal carry altogether.
The permit process includes a background check, gun safety education and live fire training. A March Elon University survey found that 54% of surveyed North Carolinians don’t want to get rid of the permit requirement, while 34% support permitless carry.
Other states that have established permitless carry have seen more gun violence, theft and road rage shootings, said Meg Beauregard, Everytown for Gun Safety policy counsel fellow.
“The crux of the issue is that the Second Amendment protects public carry, but that does not mean that people should be able to carry in public without any safeguards such as safety training and background checks,” Beauregard said.
Lawmakers are trying to sell lifetime permits as a middle ground for those who think permitless carry goes too far, she added. But getting a background check every five years is a reasonable standard that doesn’t need changing, Beauregard said.
“People’s lives and circumstances change,” she said. “A person who was law abiding five years ago could become prohibited today and pose a threat carrying a firearm in public.”
Republicans followed national party rhetoric on immigration and DEI, as well.
The North Carolina Border Protection Act would require state law enforcement agencies to cooperate with federal immigration officials and perform some immigration enforcement themselves. The Criminal Illegal Alien Enforcement Act expands jailors requirements to check citizenship status to North Carolinians arrested for felony offenses, domestic violence protective order violations, DUIs and some misdemeanors.
Three bills eliminating diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in state and local government, public schools and higher education made crossover and are eligible to move forward this session.
Finally, lawmakers have approved measures that would hand Republican executives more authority. The DAVE Act, aptly named after State Auditor Dave Boliek, would establish the Division of Accountability, Value and Efficiency to assess the use of public funds. House Bill 549 would go further, granting the auditor near unfettered access to records of any group that receives or handles state or federal funds.
State Treasurer Brad Briner, under one bill, would get the go ahead to invest a certain percentage of state funds in cryptocurrencies.
At the same time, Republican legislators have supported limiting Democratic executives’ power. For example, bills banning the attorney general from challenging presidential executive orders in court and prohibiting the governor from expanding unemployment insurance benefits during an emergency without legislative approval crossed over.
Democrats had a few minor wins. Rep. Carla Cunningham, D-Mecklenburg, managed to get bills banning hemp and vapor products on public school grounds and encouraging nonpublic schools to adopt similar policies to cross over to the state Senate.
Fellow Mecklenburg Democratic Rep. Terry Brown Jr’s bill to protect North Carolinians from coerced debt through intimidation, force or fraud made the cut.
And House Democratic Leader Robert Reives won Republican votes to approve bills creating a small business investment grant and an agricultural manufacturing investment grant to encourage economic growth.
This is not to say that all, most or even any of these measures will ever become law. They are subject to substantial revision. Their final form will need to win approval from both the House and Senate. And then they have to win support from Gov. Josh Stein, who is likely to veto many of the more partisan measures. Stein’s fellow Democrats have just enough seats in the House to prevent Republicans from overriding vetoes on strictly party-line votes.
Which bills fell short of crossover?
Tuesday, Democratic lawmakers, a minority in both the House and Senate, conducted a “bill funeral” for hundreds of Democratic-sponsored bills that didn’t make crossover after being buried in committee without ever seeing the light of day — or a floor vote.
Among those bills are legislation that would require firearm safe storage, ban employment discrimination based on hairstyles associated with certain races, boost labor union organizing rights, prohibit law enforcement from helping immigration officials and codifying the right to same sex marriage, IVF and contraception in North Carolina law.
But many Republican-sponsored bills didn’t get the votes to cross over, either.
A bill changing the execution methods for people on death row — an attempt to jumpstart a stalled court process that has effectively ended the death penalty for over a decade — passed House committees but never received a floor vote.
The Women’s Safety and Protection Act, which would ban transgender North Carolinians and others from using a bathroom that doesn’t align with their sex assigned at birth, didn’t gain much momentum.
Rep. Keith Kidwell’s attempt to ban abortion at conception, Rep. Brian Echevarria’s desire to make North Carolina a Second Amendment sanctuary state and Rep. Jonathan Almond’s entreaty to remove fluoride from the water treatment process failed to make crossover this time around.
And ironically, Rep. Donny Lambeth’s bill to limit the session’s length to 45 days in even years and 90 days in odd years didn’t get off the ground.
While lawmakers may stick around Raleigh for the entire year, the playing field post-crossover is clearer. North Carolinians will have to stay tuned in to figure out which bills, most of them conservative priorities, have a shot at becoming law.
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