CHILD WELFARE

✅ LB42 (Sen. Ben Hansen) clarifies that certain reasonable childhood independence activities do not constitute neglect by narrowing Nebraska’s broad definition of child neglect under the Child Protection and Family Safety Act and the Nebraska Juvenile Code.
Nebraska Appleseed’s position: Support

✅ LB271 (Sen. Terrell McKinney) addresses racism and disproportionality within our child welfare system by narrowing who is required to report suspected child abuse and neglect to only include certain professionals, who must be trained in mandatory reporting duties, cultural competency, and community response.
Nebraska Appleseed’s position: Support

❌ LB575 (Sen. Kathleen Kauth) prohibits schools from allowing young people to access the restroom, locker room, or teams designated for a gender different than their gender assigned at birth. Trans and gender diverse young people deserve access to safe and normal school activities and spaces, authentic to their identity.
Nebraska Appleseed’s position: Opposed

✅ LB945 (Sen. Jana Hughes) would require that children leaving foster care receive important documents, information, and materials as they transition into adulthood.
Nebraska Appleseed’s position: Support

❌ LB1417 (Sen. Tom Brewer at the request of the Governor) would terminate the Nebraska Children’s Commission’s Alternative Response and Bridge to Independence Advisory Committees.
Nebraska Appleseed’s position: Opposed

ECONOMIC SECURITY

✅ LB233 (Sen. John Cavanaugh) would end the child support penalty in Nebraska’s Aid to Dependent Children (ADC) program. This will ensure that child support funds are actually used to support children in Nebraska’s lowest income families.
Nebraska Appleseed’s position: Support

✅ LB290 (Sen. Machaela Cavanaugh) puts money in the pockets of families who need it by increasing the eligibility limit for Aid to Dependent Children (ADC), the direct cash assistance program funded by the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) Block Grant.
Nebraska Appleseed’s position: Support

✅ LB294 (Sen. Danielle Conrad) helps families fight the cost of living by adopting the Child Tax Credit Act (CTC), which would create a fully refundable tax credit of $1,000 per child under age 18 for Nebraska taxpayers in low-income households. LB1324 (also introduced by Sen. Conrad) is the same as LB294, but only applies to children age 6 and under.
Nebraska Appleseed’s position: Support

✅ LB840 (Sen. Terrell McKinney) would require cities across the state to create a comprehensive poverty elimination action plan to address the specific poverty challenges faced across the state and to promote upward mobility and sustainability.
Nebraska Appleseed’s position: Support

✅ LB871 (Sen. Machaela Cavanaugh) would provide transparency and accountability when it comes to our state’s use of TANF money and allow Nebraska to make the best use of funds available.
Nebraska Appleseed’s position: Support

FOOD & NUTRITION ACCESS

✅ LB88 (Sen. Megan Hunt) helps Nebraskans support themselves by eliminating the ban on Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits for people with drug felony convictions.
Nebraska Appleseed’s position: Support

✅ LB99 (Sen. Machaela Cavanaugh) provides free school meals for all students in Nebraska by adopting the Hunger-Free Schools Act.
Nebraska Appleseed’s position: Support

✅ LB285 (Sen. Lynne Walz) helps more kids have access to healthy meals by requiring that Nebraska schools or districts that serve a certain percentage of students in poverty participate in the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) to serve free breakfast and lunch to all students.
Nebraska Appleseed’s position: Support

✅ LB855 (Sen. Danielle Conrad) would prevent Nebraska school districts from turning unpaid school meal debt over to debt collection agencies.
Nebraska Appleseed’s position: Support

✅ LB920 (Sen. Terrell McKinney) would require DHHS to create a SNAP Restaurant Meals Program that would allow SNAP recipients who are homeless, disabled or elderly, and their spouses, to purchase hot meals at participating restaurants that would provide them at reduced prices.
Nebraska Appleseed’s position: Support

✅ LB952 (Sen. Jen Day) would provide summer grocery-buying benefits to low-income families with school-aged children by requiring the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services to implement the federal Summer Electronic Benefits Transfer (Summer EBT) Program.
Nebraska Appleseed’s position: Support

✅ LB1291 (Sen. Danielle Conrad) would provide summer grocery-buying benefits to low-income families with school-aged children by requiring the Nebraska Department of Education to implement the federal Summer Electronic Benefits Transfer (Summer EBT) Program.
Nebraska Appleseed’s position: Support

❌ LB1381 (Sen. Ben Hansen) would prevent Nebraska from applying for waivers during economic downturns and implement new work requirements for recipients of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
Nebraska Appleseed’s position: Opposed

HEALTH CARE ACCESS

✅ LB62 (Sen. Machaela Cavanaugh) removes language barriers between patients and providers by requiring that translation and interpretation services are reimbursed under Medicaid.
Nebraska Appleseed’s position: Support

✅ LB85 (Sen. Jen Day) saves Nebraska families time and resources by providing for express lane eligibility under the Medical Assistance Act and the Children’s Health Insurance Program.
Nebraska Appleseed’s position: Support

✅ LB358 (Sen. Lynne Walz) increases reimbursement rates for Medicaid dental services. Increased provider rates is linked to increased provider participation in the Medicaid program, and therefore increased enrollee access to dental services.
Nebraska Appleseed’s position: Support

❌ LB606 (Sen. Joni Albrecht) provides tax incentives to funnel donations to “pregnancy help organizations” that do not provide complete health services or information (including referrals or recommendations) regarding access to abortion.
Nebraska Appleseed’s position: Opposed

❌ LB810 (Sen. Dave Murman) effectively adds additional barriers that would further exacerbate deep health disparities and inequities.
Nebraska Appleseed’s position: Opposed

✅ LB857 (Sen. George Dungan, Sen. Carolyn Bosn, Sen. Jana Hughes) seeks to improve Medicaid prenatal care services for at-risk pregnant people, which will help improve outcomes for babies and moms.
Nebraska Appleseed’s position: Support

✅ LB913 (Sen. Megan Hunt) helps Nebraska take a major step forward in ensuring that postpartum health care is available to all women and people who need it, which is critical for keeping babies, families, and our communities healthy.
Nebraska Appleseed’s position: Support

✅ LB1106 (Sen. Jen Day) improves access to lactation consulting services for Nebraskans with Medicaid so that newborns and their families have the resources they need. Many Nebraskans face barriers to breastfeeding, including a lack of support and access to resources.
Nebraska Appleseed’s position: Support

✅ LB1107 (Sen. Jen Day) improves access to breast pumps for Nebraskans with Medicaid so that newborns and their families have the resources they need. Breastfeeding can provide benefits and improved health outcomes to both babies and moms.
Nebraska Appleseed’s position: Support

✅ LB1237 (Sen. Machaela Cavanaugh) specifies data Nebraska DHHS must provide in its annual Medicaid report to ensure transparency and availability of critical information regarding Nebraskans’ access to Medicaid health coverage.
Nebraska Appleseed’s position: Support

✅ LB1278 (Sen. Terrell McKinney) requires Medicaid to cover the cost of doulas, who are trained to support families through the labor and birthing process and have been shown to improve health outcomes for both moms and babies.
Nebraska Appleseed’s position: Support

HOUSING JUSTICE

✅ LB8 (Sen. Carol Blood) strengthens tenant protections within our Mobile Home Landlord Tenant Act by requiring mobile home landlords to have good cause to initiate an eviction proceeding, and amending mobile home lien procedures.
Nebraska Appleseed’s position: Support

✅ LB248 (Sen. Tony Vargas) protects families’ ability to rent housing, regardless of how they would pay their rent, by prohibiting discrimination based on lawful Source of Income (SOI) under the Nebraska Fair Housing Act and creating the Landlord Guarantee Program.
Nebraska Appleseed’s position: Support

✅ LB1115 (Sen. George Dungan) recognizes Nebraskans’ Constitutional right to a trial by jury in eviction cases. It also ensures that tenants will be informed of their right and protects against leases that would require tenants to waive their right to a trial by jury.
Nebraska Appleseed’s position: Support

IMMIGRANTS & COMMUNITIES

✅ LB618 (Sen. Mike McDonnell) fixes a gap in Nebraska by ensuring that all work-authorized Nebraskans can access the unemployment insurance they have earned and their employers have already paid for.
Nebraska Appleseed’s position: Support

✅ LB918 (Sen. Justin Wayne) would ensure longtime community members with DACA who grew up in Nebraska can pursue careers in law enforcement.
Nebraska Appleseed’s position: Support

See also LB62 and LB913 under Health Care Access.

RACE EQUITY & INCLUSIVE COMMUNITIES

❌ LB374 (Sen. Dave Murman) harmfully obstructs the ability of teachers to teach history and to hold discussions about the laws, practices, institutions, structures, and barriers based on race and sex that come out of our country’s history.
Nebraska Appleseed’s position: Opposed

❌ LB1034, LB1065, LB1066 (Sen. Loren Lippincott) would undermine freedom of religion and an inclusive learning environment for Nebraska students of all backgrounds, by allowing religious instruction through public-school resources in several ways.
Nebraska Appleseed’s position: Opposed

❌ LB1330 (Sen. Dave Murman) would create barriers to education by preventing the University of Nebraska and all public state and community colleges from using money or staffing for programming related to diversity, equity, and inclusion. The bill’s broad language related to race, sex, and ethnicity will create a chilling effect on open learning and discussion of history in our educational system.
Nebraska Appleseed’s position: Opposed

STRENGTHENING DEMOCRACY

✅ LB1042 (Sen. John Fredrickson) automatically registers people who are eligible to vote when they apply for a driver’s license or state identification card, unless they affirmatively opt out of the registration process.
Nebraska Appleseed’s position: Support

❌ LB1211 (Sen. Ben Hansen) weakens democracy by making it harder for Nebraskans with busy work and family schedules to vote early and by mail – significantly reducing early voting periods from 30 days to only 22 days or less.
Nebraska Appleseed’s position: Opposed

WORKER SAFETY, WAGES, & PROTECTIONS

✅ LB272 (Sen. Tony Vargas) supports Nebraskans injured on the job by reducing Nebraska’s longest-in-the-nation waiting periods for workers’ compensation – the system that helps people recover from workplace injuries. (Reduces the initial waiting period from 7 days to 3 days and the retroactive period from 42 days to 14 days, similar to surrounding states.)
Nebraska Appleseed’s position: Support

❌ LB327 (Sen. Jane Raybould) would severely weaken the automatic wage adjustments by capping the indexing mechanism at 1.5% beginning January 1, 2027. This proposal would mean that the maximum wage increase that Nebraska workers would be entitled to in 2027 is an additional 23 cents per hour, all but ensuring that Nebraska wages once again fall well behind cost of living increases.
Nebraska Appleseed’s position: Opposed

✅ LB405 (Sen. Tony Vargas) benefits Nebraskans working in large-scale meat and poultry plants by ensuring better transparency and consistent data for policymakers related to an industry with a decades-long track record of alarmingly high injury rates.
Nebraska Appleseed’s position: Support

❌ LB443 (Sen. Joni Albrecht) weakens Nebraska’s workers’ compensation program by terminating lifetime benefits at the age of seventy-two. Nebraskans need a strong, supportive workers’ compensation program to support and protect Nebraska’s workforce.
Nebraska Appleseed’s position: Opposed

✅ LB755 (Sen. Tony Vargas) benefits workers in Nebraska’s meat and poultry industries by extending our state’s meatpacking coordinator position to full time through the appropriation of additional funds to the Department of Labor.
Nebraska Appleseed’s position: Support

✅ LB906 (Sen. Merv Riepe) responds to a recent federal investigation that discovered more than 30 children were employed to clean Nebraska meatpacking facilities in 2022. Large-scale meatpacking continues to be one of Nebraska’s most dangerous industries; this bill takes a step in the right direction by increasing penalties for child labor violations. As our state continues to address labor violations in the meatpacking industry, we urge the state to hold corporate actors accountable for these violations (rather than individual people like parents).
Nebraska Appleseed’s position: Support

❌ LR277CA (Sen. Rita Sanders) is an extreme, one-size-fits-all change to Nebraska’s constitution that would require life imprisonment for all people convicted of any kind of trafficking offense – when Nebraska’s experience in O’Neill and Grand Island has demonstrated that trafficking can intersect with a wide range of people at very different levels, such as parents or people who are peripherally involved.
Nebraska Appleseed’s position: Opposed

Each legislative session presents an opportunity to bring long-lasting, positive change for our communities. Your voice is important to build a vibrant, diverse, and inclusive Nebraska.

Here’s how you can get involved and take action during this legislative session:

• Schedule of upcoming legislative hearings.
• You may also submit a comment online on a bill. Click on the link above for the bill you are interested in submitting a comment on and choose ‘Submit a comment online’. Visit the Unicameral’s website for more information.
• Find your senator.
• Stream all hearings and legislative floor debate on Nebraska Public Media.

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