Two pieces of legislation that would define public and recreational use of Lake Michigan’s shores and give jurisdiction of seawalls, beach grooming and land walls to the Indiana Department of Natural Resources have made advances in the Indiana Senate this week.
The Republican-dominated Indiana Senate passed a stripped-down hate crimes bill Thursday and sent the measure to the House, where Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb and others hope the legislation can still be strengthened. The Senate voted 39-10 in favor of the legislation that was changed two days earlier to remove a list of specifically protected characteristics, including sexual orientation, gender identity and race.
The Republican-majority Senate stripped a hate crimes bill Tuesday of language that specified the types of crimes it would apply to — those motivated by race, religion, sexual orientation, gender and other categories — despite emotional pleas by Democrats to leave the bill as written.
The petition asking the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold a law restricting abortions in Indiana has been distributed for a fifth conference with the justices. Now the petition has been scheduled for consideration Feb. 22.
The Supreme Court of the United States will not hear an appeal that sought to restrict public access to the Indiana shore of Lake Michigan. Justices let stand an Indiana Supreme Court decision that found a public access right to the state’s 45 miles of Great Lakes beaches.
Legislation in the Indiana General Assembly Bill would compensate people who have been exonerated after a wrongful conviction, but only if they don’t sue the state.
Indiana drivers could face tougher penalties for passing stopped school buses under a bill advancing in the Legislature.
After more than three hours of testimony and discussion on Monday morning, the Senate Public Policy Committee voted to send a bias crimes bill to the full Senate for consideration. Senate Bill 12 would give judges the ability to consider whether a crime was committed out of hate or bias toward specific groups of individuals as an aggravating circumstance at sentencing.
A proposed Indiana hate crimes law has been endorsed by a state legislative committee. The Senate Public Policy Committee voted 9-1 on Monday to advance the bill to the full Senate after hearing nearly three hours of public testimony from opponents and supporters of the legislation.
Opponents and supporters of a proposed Indiana hate crimes law are arguing their positions before state legislators. A state Senate committee opened a hearing Monday morning on a bill that would create a law specifically against crimes fueled by biases regarding traits such as race, religion and sexual orientation.
State lawmakers on Wednesday made changes to two major bills addressing alcohol issues before moving both pieces of legislation to the full House for consideration.
A bill that would end the prohibition on light-rail construction in Marion and six other central Indiana counties passed the Indiana House on Tuesday.
Individuals who were sexually abused as children will have to keep waiting for justice, now that a bill that could potentially give them more time to sue their abusers has been routed for further study.
Legislative Republicans are not going to take any action on a proposal that aims to make it easier to remove some state officeholders from their positions, which was filed by an Indiana legislator who says she was groped by Attorney General Curtis Hill.
A bill that defines the shore of Lake Michigan as belonging to the public and spells out public recreational uses of the shoreline has moved to the full Indiana Senate. Meanwhile, a petition seeking to privatize Indiana’s Great Lakes beaches will be before justices of the Supreme Court of the United States this week.
The House Committee on Courts and Criminal Code on Wednesday unanimously stripped a proposed bill of language that would have required Indiana public officials to serve prison time for theft of taxpayer dollars. In its place, the committee added a provision to recoup any monetary losses from the pension funds of officials convicted of theft.
Indiana Republicans eager for a rare legal victory in their efforts to restrict abortion rights are seeking to outlaw a second-trimester procedure, hopeful an increasingly conservative U.S. Supreme Court will back a ban that courts have blocked in seven other states.
Smaller political parties would face lower requirements to get their candidates on Indiana's ballot under a bill backed by a legislative panel.
Indiana is again appealing to the Supreme Court of the United States to overturn a preliminary injunction blocking a state abortion law, this one requiring women to get an ultrasound at least 18 hours before the procedure. The provision was included in House Enrolled Act 1337, which was signed into law by then-Gov. Mike Pence in 2016.
A bill that would require counties using electronic voting systems to also maintain a paper trail is moving forward at the Indiana General Assembly.