Nebraska state senator launches Don’t Legislate Hate PAC

Nebraska state Sen. Machaela Cavanaugh (D), whose filibuster of a bill to ban gender-affirming health care for transgender youths has slowed floor action to a crawl, announced Monday she is launching a new political action committee.

The Don’t Legislate Hate PAC promises to elect pro-LGBTQ equality candidates to state legislatures nationwide.

Cavanaugh, who has been filibustering every bill in the state’s unicameral legislature since Feb. 24, said she is launching the PAC with two of her Democratic colleagues, Nebraska Sens. Megan Hunt and John Fredrickson, both of Omaha.

“I’m starting a political action committee called DontLegislateHate.org,” Cavanaugh said Monday during an interview with “GMA3.”

“[W]e’ve been hearing an outpouring from people in Nebraska and across the country wanting to know how they can support what we are doing and what steps they can take to be activated,” Cavanaugh said. “And so we decided that this was a good step in the right direction to start a political action committee so that we can support candidates and the conversation to stop this type of legislation across the country and definitely here at home in Nebraska.”

Close to 450 bills targeting the rights of LGBTQ Americans have been introduced this year by lawmakers in at least 44 states, according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), including a record-high number of proposed laws that target transgender people specifically.

At least 24 anti-LGBTQ bills this year have become law, according to the ACLU, already creeping up on the record 29 bills passed last year.

Democrats in Republican-controlled state legislatures this year have struggled to keep up with a barrage of proposed laws that threaten to roll back the rights of LGBTQ people across the country, increasingly relying on tactics like the filibuster to force compromise.

A group of Missouri senators last month filibustered for days a bill to bar transgender youths from accessing gender-affirming health care — considered medically necessary by most major medical organizations. Senators moved the bill forward last month after Democrats held the floor for more than 13 hours in an all-night filibuster to facilitate closed-door negotiations with GOP leadership.

A bill to prevent transgender women and girls from competing on female sports teams also advanced.

Cavanaugh’s Don’t Legislate Hate PAC will use its national platform to support state-level candidates “with the courage to stop anti-LGBTQ+ legislation across our country,” the group wrote Monday in a post on Twitter.

“Our team believes that everyone deserves to live in a society that values diversity, inclusivity, and equality, and will work tirelessly to make this vision a reality. An attack on some of us is an attack on all of us,” reads a post on the PAC’s website.