Welcome to Family Policy Matters, a weekly podcast and radio show produced by the North Carolina Family Policy Council. Hi, I'm John Rust and president of NCE Family, and each week on Family Policy Matters, we welcome experts and policy leaders to discuss topics that impact faith and family here in North Carolina. Our prayer is that this program will help encourage and equip you to be a voice of persuasion for family values in your community, state, and nation. Thank you for joining us for our NC Family year-in review. I'm Mitch Prosser, Vice President here at North Carolina Family Policy Council, alongside my colleagues John Rustin, our president, and Jerry Royal, our counsel here at NC Family.
In 2025, the North Carolina General Assembly filed 1,795 bills, and our team reviewed every single one of those bills, some of which are now awaiting a veto override vote and some of which are now laws.
So, let's take a look at a few of those laws that became law during the past session and discuss those as a review of what happened this past year. John, let's take a look at House Bill 805 to prevent sexual exploitation for women and minors. Yes, this bill started out in the House and was really designed to create penalties for the posting of non-consensual, explicit images online to protect women and children in particular, but everybody for that matter from having their personal sensitive images posted on the internet. When the bill went to the Senate, the Senate added a number of significant and good provisions to the bill, which we're grateful for. These included defining the terms male and female in state law based on biological sex, prohibiting taxpayer funds from paying for puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and gender transition surgeries in our state prisons for incarcerated individuals, creating an extended 10-year statute of limitations for malpractice lawsuits that arise from gender transition procedures when the person who the procedure was performed upon realizes that that was not in their best interest and in their health.
This bill also allowed students to opt out of activities that would substantially burden their religious liberties in schools. And it also directed local boards of education to maintain a web-based catalog of all the books that were included in the library so parents can go and search those books and also designate which books their children cannot check out to protect them from inappropriate materials. And exposure to that material at school. Excellent. Jerry, we called this a pro-family omnibus bill.
Anything else this bill does?
Well, just to that last point that you raised, John, just recently there was a legislative hearing addressing what is happening in some of the school systems. You know, and sometimes people say, y'all are talking about things that aren't really happening.
Well, it's hard to uncover those, but if you put it in law, that there's going to be a catalog of what is in our schools, it's a way that people can begin to see what's there and what may be objectionable for a lot of people.
So, these, like you say, this started out as a bill with one focus, and the Senate saw it as an opportunity to take some other bills with similar all of these are related issues as far as sexuality, what's happening, and how do our laws need to stand strong when it comes to some of these very important issues. Protecting children and preserving parental rights and the rights of parents, the fundamental rights of parents to raise their children to be very Involved in their education and their health care and things of that nature. John, speaking of parental rights, SB 442, the Parents Protection Act, what does this law do? This law actually was signed by the governor. It did not have to get a veto override.
He signed this bill into law. This bill protects the rights of parents to raise their children consistent with the child's innate biological sex as male or female. We've seen efforts in some states to basically criminalize parenting that does not affirm a child who is challenged with gender dysphoria or gender confusion. And so this asserts and affirms the parents' rights to raise their child consistent with their biological sex. It also applies a similar standard to adoptive parents.
So they cannot be denied the opportunity to adopt a child if they desire to raise that child consistent with the child's biological sex. Again, this is an important area where, you know, you mentioned just about adoption. Sadly, there's stories that are heard about even here in North Carolina where a family may be. Denied the right to adopt because they say that they will raise a child according to their biological sex.
So, once again, it's important that this now be in state law where people who maybe have different ideas about that are going, I need to follow state law. One, when it comes to adoption, but also, like you say, down, there are some states that had taken this issue and say, We're going to remove the child from your home. And apparently, even maybe again in North Carolina, you hear stories where people maybe are going to be charged with abuse or neglect because they're raising their children according to their biological sex.
So, again, the legislature has taken some good, strong steps in these important areas. They said, Don't bring your California to our Carolina, because that's what exactly was happening in places like California, Colorado, and other states. Jerry, another bill that was passed into law is House Bill 959. It has a fairly innocuous title, various education changes, but one of the most encouraging and exciting things that this bill did was specifically designed for schools and cellular devices. In schools.
Tell us more about what this bill did there. Instead of making an overall policy, this law tells the school districts they are to come up with a policy at a minimum that says no cell phones during instructional time. You kind of wonder, why did this go along so long before there was a law? I can't imagine what it's been like for teachers.
So hopefully, this is a great step within our school system. In addition to that, there is also part of the law that says to teach our children about the harms of potential harms of technology, harms of social media, what it can do to them emotionally, psychologically.
So, once again, important area. We're hearing more and more about the harms that are being done emotionally, psychologically, older people, and younger people's lives. And so, thankfully, our schools are now going to be a place where people are going to be informed children will be.
Well, and one of the other various education changes consistent with the title of the bill is a provision that directs the school systems to adopt policies to protect children as they're accessing the internet at schools.
So, they avoid. circumstances where they're encountering inappropriate material, that sort of thing.
So three very significant provisions in this bill helping to protect children, but also again, as we've talked about before, to preserve the rights of parents to raise their children and shield their children from the negative effects of technology when it is used in an inappropriate manner. Absolutely. Very encouraging stuff there. The last bill that we'll touch on is House Bill 612, and this is the Fostering Care in North Carolina Act. John, this made a lot of changes to foster and adoptive law.
What significantly did it do to improve laws here in the state of North Carolina?
Well, overall, I think it's, again, like you said, it made a lot of different changes, especially with respect to the foster care system in North Carolina. And so it was an intention to improve, as we've been talking about for years, foster care and adoption, just the systems in North Carolina to amend those so that they operate more in the interest of children and are, you know, streamlined and things of that. That nature. Excellent. Very good.
Yeah, quick note on that. This is a good example. Legislation, it took over two years to pass. I think there were over 10 versions of the law. One of the things that was discovered in the latter stages was a provision that actually would have hurt adoption.
And that's why the process of making laws is important that it go through numerous committees. Both chambers, in this case, made a major correction as important changes were being made in the law. And I would just give a shout out to Representative Alan Chesser, who was the primary sponsor and real promoter of this legislation. It gained a lot of support throughout the legislature, but he really served as a champion of this bill and did a super job. And Jerry, as you said, when there were some concerns that were raised about the bill and the potential negative effect that it could have on the practical adoption process, they were willing to make some concessions to address that.
And so it ended up being a very positive bill. And there's great news for those of you wondering about predatory gambling, the proliferation of marijuana usage here in the state of North Carolina. There were no changes. There was nothing done on that front in 2025.
So no steps were taken to legalize those things any further than they already are with the expansion of predatory gambling. And I would just say that's a miracle, really, because the pressure that we saw that was applied in the General Assembly in the 2023 session to establish commercial casinos, gambling casinos in North Carolina, to legalize marijuana. It was amazing that with all that happened in 2023, that there were no significant efforts in 2025 to promote gambling expansion and the legalization of marijuana in North Carolina.
So we're extremely grateful for that. A lot of the success of that is due to supporters of the Family Policy Council who responded to our action alerts and our appeals for them to contact their legislators to express their concerns about those proposals. Absolutely. Not only did we see great wins at the legislature this past year, but in 2025, North Carolina Family Policy Council joined groups across the country to advance some extremely important initiatives. One of those was joining An Amica's brief supporting parental rights in a Supreme Court case where a school sought to transition a child without the parents' knowledge or consent.
That was a landmark ruling by the Supreme Court and North Carolina Family Policy Council had the opportunity to speak into that case. Jerry, another one was signing a letter to President Trump. What did that letter speak to? This was about the FDA's approval of the chemical abortion drug, which goes back to 2000. And sadly, what's happened over the 25 years is they've loosened the original restrictions on that.
Well, thankfully, the Ethics and Public Policy Center this year came out with a major study of over 865,000 abortions and found that the serious adverse events were 22 times what originally had been looked at when the decisions were being made about how this drug should be offered. Instead of it being one-half of 1%, it's more than 10% of cases involve serious adverse events.
So thankfully, With this letter and other efforts, the administration has said we are going to re-look at the FDA and how it's approaching this drug. Absolutely. John, we appealed to the U.S. Congress several times. Tell us about a couple of those appeals that we made.
Well, one of the big ones was the Lumbee Recognition Act that's been kind of a standard piece of legislation in the U.S. Congress in our nation's capital, seeking to give the Lumbee tribe in North Carolina full federal recognition, which would benefit them in lots of ways, providing hundreds of millions of dollars for education, housing, health care, things of that nature. But it also, and this is our concern with that legislation, would give them a right to pursue gambling operations in North Carolina, potentially a major casino development or casino developments along the I-95 corridor in eastern North Carolina.
So we appealed to our members of our congressional delegation and asked them that should that act move forward, whether as a standalone bill or part of another bill, that they include language in it that would expressly prohibit the Lumbee tribe from having The right to gamble. We have appealed for that before, and that actually language has been included in the Lumbee Recognition Act in years past. Unfortunately, it has not been a part of the bill that is currently being considered by the U.S. Congress, but we're going to continue to advocate for that to keep gambling expansion out of the state of North Carolina. Absolutely.
So, those were a couple of the great things that we saw.
So, as we look ahead into 2026, the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, as well as the 35th anniversary of our organization here at NC Family, there's several accomplishments that we're still looking forward to and have yet to be realized. John, tell us quickly about how the biennium works and the 2025 and 2026 session.
Well, North Carolina operates on a two-year legislative biennium.
So, the 2025 session was the first year of that two-year biennium, and 2026 is actually a continuation of the 2025 session. And so, there were several pieces of legislation that were considered, some bills that were passed by the General Assembly that were Vetoed by the governor, that we're still awaiting action by the General Assembly, particularly in the state House of Representatives. And so, those bills that did not see final action during the 2025 session, many of them can be held over and considered during the 2026 session. And so, we're awaiting action on a number of those bills during the legislative, the short session, which begins at the end of April. Yes, sir.
So, veto overrides, and we can talk a little bit about that. But the other issue is the passage of a state budget. We're currently operating on a budget from 2023, but we await a 2025-2026 biennium budget. Jerry, what do we need to know about that as we look back at the past year and forward to 2026? What we're seeing from communications we're reading and hearing are the House and Senate have different ideas about how to finalize the budget.
They've agreed on the $32.6 billion total amount, but how to bring in the money. The Senate wants to continue to lower the state personal income tax. The House is saying we need Need to delay that sum because of the revenue predictions that we're looking at right now. The other side of it is how much to increase the state employees and teacher pay. House wants larger increases.
They're still working through those differences, and hopefully, prayerfully, those things are going to happen soon. Absolutely. And one other side note of what we're particularly focused on: the pregnancy care ministries are an important part of the budget that we want to see continue to receive appropriations from the state. Absolutely. So, we'll stay up to date on all those things, and we'll keep you up to date in 2026.
We're excited about a lot of great initiatives that we have in the upcoming year, and we can't wait to tell you about those. We're grateful for you and your faithful support of our work here at NC Family.
So, thank you for helping our team do the work that we do here in North Carolina. God bless you all. Thank you for listening to Family Policy Matters. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the show and leave us a review. To learn more about NC Family and the work we do to promote and preserve faith and family in North Carolina, visit our website at ncfamily.org.
That's ncfamily.org. And check us out on social media at NC Family Policy. Thanks and may God bless you and your family.
