Madison – Yesterday, the Assembly Committee on Health, Aging and Long-Term Care voted, along party lines, to request changes to an administrative rule being issued by the Department of Health Services (DHS). This rule changes DHS administrative code relating to prenatal care and child care coordination; among other changes are replacing the word “mother” with “member” and “father” with “other parent.” As a member of the Health Committee, Rep. Neylon issued the following statement:
“In the wake of the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s Evers v. Marklein decision, this is what we should come to expect. State agencies legislating from the Executive Branch, with no concern for what the people, or their representatives, feel is right. In the case of this rule, they don’t even adhere to any level of common sense or biological reality.
“Words have meanings, especially those defined in state law and administrative code, and we ignore those meanings at our peril. The steps Governor Evers’ bureaucrats are taking to undermine both the importance of Wisconsin’s legislative body and the essence of what it means to be a parent is shocking.
“In a drastically short period of time, we’ve gone from a divided government composed of three co-equal branches that required cooperation and compromise to make changes which affect us all, to something new in Wisconsin. The Governor’s party, through collaboration with a biased Supreme Court, has effectively shut the Legislature out of the process, without having to do so at the ballot box. This is only the beginning.”
