A House rule, which can be used when the House is debating bills on the local and consent calendar, allows a representative to give an opposition speech for 10 minutes or five representatives to band together against a bill. If either of these happens, the bill will be knocked off of the calendar to be taken up at another time.
Bills on the local and consent calendar are placed there because they have a limited effect to just a local area or because they are deemed to have the consent of the chamber to move forward.
Stickland, a member of the ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus, employed this tactic on a number of bills, often running out the time on a microphone with specific questions.
At the beginning of the local and consent calendar, Stickland tweeted his intentions for the day.
There are a lot of bad bills on today's local and consent calendar. Not for long... #txlege
— Jonathan Stickland (@RepStickland) May 9, 2017
On Tuesday, he and the Freedom Caucus temporarily stopped the passage of two bills in particular—one that aims to reduce the maternal mortality rate and the other that seeks to end the practice of lunch shaming.
Rep. Sarah Davis, R-West University Place, sponsored HB 1158 would expand questions on Medicaid applications relating to pregnancy and preferred method of contact. Davis said these questions would better serve expecting mothers in Texas and hopefully have a chance of decreasing Texas' notably high maternal mortality rate.
Another member of the House Freedom Caucus, Rep. Briscoe Cain, R-Deer Park, took his place at the microphone and spoke for 10 minutes to knock the bill out of the realm of discussion.
Stickland himself played a hand in delaying legislation by Rep. Helen Gidding, D-Dallas, that would impose limitations on schools for students who have deficient funds in their lunch accounts.
Giddings said some schools often snatch lunches away from students who cannot pay to eat, shaming them in front of their peers. She passed HB 2159 out of the House Public Education Committee in a unanimous vote but will have to wait to take further action on the House floor.
Five members of the Freedom Caucus, including Stickland and Cain, signed a petition to remove HB 2159 from the calendar.
After Giddings' bill was knocked off the calendar, she gave a personal privilege speech and called the five members' actions "unconscionable."
There is a time crunch for when House bills must be heard, as the chamber faces a deadline on Thursday night to hear all House bills. Should bills not be heard by that point, they will have no chance of passing in that form for the rest of the session, which ends May 29.
As the House reached the end of the local and consent agenda, more than 20 bills have been knocked off the calendar, with Stickland responsible for the majority of those forced exits.
