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Unknown speaker
0:00
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
members if you'll begin taking your seats we're going to get started here in just a second
Good morning. House Judiciary will come to order. Chair sees a
quorum. Our first order of business is the consideration to approve the September 30th, 2025 meeting minutes. Do I have a motion? I have a motion. Is there a second? I have a second. Any discussion? all in favor of the motion please say aye all opposed eyes have it motion carries
the next item business we're going to move to our isps members we have a hard stop this morning because audit exec starts at 1 30 and so we've got to be out by about 11 20 i can't imagine that this is going to take all of our time but both of the presenters for the isp know that they'll have roughly between 35 and 40 minutes and if you have additional questions that would carry us past that time just get with the bill sponsor or the isp sponsor afterwards and ask your questions offline
but i just want to give everybody notice we do have a hard stop because we have a meeting that's
starting at 11 30 that we need to make sure people who want to get
to that meeting can get to so with that we're going to move to item c the consideration for adoption of isp 2025-041 representative brown you're recognized to come to the table and begin presenting your isp
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
4:48
Representative Carolyn Brown, District 67. I would like to bring Attorney Jeff
Rosenzweig to the table, please. Sure. Mr. Rosenzweig, if you'll come on. We'll try to move through
this as quickly as we can. I do have quite a few witnesses. For each of the
witnesses, because I know some of you may not have testified before, just when you get to the table, if you'll push the button and identify yourself for the record and then you go ahead and proceed with whatever testimony you wish to present.
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
5:23
Representative Brown, you're recognized. Thank you. Madam Chair, the primary objective with the amendment to Quincy's law was to allow parents to receive the medical records they need to get their second opinion. And I have Attorney Rosenzweig here who can speak to
Speaker 22
5:49
that issue. Jeff Rosenzweig. I'm a criminal defense lawyer in Little Rock, and I also represent the Arkansas Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.
This bill, this proposal to strengthen Quincy's law is necessary. I have run into my practice in cases I've had a lot of essentially passive-aggressive resistance to getting important and necessary medical records from health care providers, particularly but not exclusively Arkansas Children's Hospital.
And I've had to go to court and to the judges multiple times to get the entire corpus of records coughed up, essentially. And this bill, if and when it passes, would be an additional impetus to getting all the records. Um, for instance, uh, give you an example, uh, last year, uh, or in the past couple of years,
I had a client who was accused of causing a brain injury, uh, to his daughter, uh, and Children's Hospital had, uh, DHS had made this claim and, uh, Children's Hospital had endorsed it. Well, the child had been in, uh, Children's Hospital for six months prior. In fact, was taken there immediately after birth and had had surgeries, and we needed the records.
They had a brain scan at the time my client was charged and said, this is the brain injury. Well, it took three separate interventions by the court to get the scan from after the surgery, which was done and which was absolutely identical, and the charges ended up being dropped. That's, you know, that's another, that's an example of what we have. And you have to, for instance, with Children's Hospital, you have to go back several times.
My experience has been, for instance, that the records in an outpatient clinic at Children's are not within the hospital records that are provided to DHS, provided to everyone. Why they keep them separate, I don't know, but that is a problem, and you just have to continue to force the issue.
Well, I've been around long enough that I know how to deal with the problem, but a young lawyer or someone who hasn't had the number of issues or takes their assertions at face value is going to cause a problem. And I've had other cases over the years where this has been a problem. I had one, there's a reference in the bill to Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. I had a client who was
charged with battery on his girlfriend's son, who was several years old. He said that he had just tripped and fallen. Ehlers-Danlos, a six-inch fall on an Ehlers-Danlos child is like a six-foot fall somewhere else well as it turns out as it turns out the mother had Ehlers-Danlos so what
are the chances that the child is going to have Ehlers-Danlos and it took and and finally got them to do the genetic testing and it the case the case went away at that point and so you've got You know, I can give you other examples, but anything that allows appropriate medical testing and gets access to the results is going, you know, is to be commended and should be, you know, and should be endorsed by this panel and by the legislature as a whole.
We're talking about possible criminal charges, there's going to be the dependency neglect and the possible revocation of parental rights, certainly custody issues, people put on the child maltreatment registry improperly or, you know, for no good reason or mistakenly. And so I'm happy to answer any questions anyone may have. Members, are there any questions?
seeing no questions thank you mr. Rosen's way it's always good
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
11:13
to see you thank you madam chair I'd like to bring dr.
Thomas louder dr. Rachel coat and dr. Cole to the table please let's see we might need to get a another chair
I'll get one well Emily Emily can you get
miscounted we've got I think we've got them I was still counting mr.
Speaker 39
11:59
Rosen swag is being there, so I think we're good. I think the best way
to handle this, Representative Brown, is whoever's going to testify first
will let them identify themselves and then testify. But before you ever speak, please make sure you identify yourself for the record. All right. Thank you. You're
Ryan James
Unverified
12:36
on. Thomas Lauder, L-O-W-D-E-R, Ph.D. I am a research scientist. I am not a physician. I'm going to speak about Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome and some of the connective tissue disorders and how they affect people, primarily children. I'll defer all the medical questions to Dr. Cole. She is an expert in this.
So the Ehlers-Danlos syndromes comprise a rare group of understudied connective tissue disorders. At least 14 known subtypes exist. There will probably be more. The most prevalent by far is hypermobile. When you see people with EDS, this is primarily the poster child that you see is the person who can bend in all sorts of unusual ways. Females are approximately 95% of all cases. Males are sometimes affected. By far, women make up the preponderance of patients, primarily those under 50 years of
age and primarily Caucasian. This is a heritable connective tissue disorder disease, meaning that it is often passed from parent to child, quite often unknowingly. There are people who have generations of symptoms, and nobody has identified this in them yet. Among other things, patients suffer from frequent joint dislocations, subluxations. This is also very pain-driven. Everybody who has EDS has pain. There is a large fear of falling, kinesiophobia, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome or POTS,
mast cell activation syndrome, pelvic floor dysfunction, and genitourinary incontinence and prolapse, both vaginally and rectally, are common. menstrual cycle dysregulation, gastrointestinal and eating disorders, and a variety of psychiatric disorders, including depression, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder, ADHD, autism, and suicidal ideologies are very common. Patients also exhibit very poor balance and proprioception. We studied about 80 patients, and we found that none of them can stand up very well.
They tend to fall. They tend to run into things. with this we see muscle and bone weakness we see a lot of chronic pain which is probably the number one concern that these patients have we also see very frequent bruising and this happens quite easily these are prominent we will see patients that will come in and they have bruises up and down their body and you ask them how they got those and they can't tell you sometimes they wake up with them in arkansas it's very difficult to receive a medical diagnosis because we have very
few specialists who understand any kind of connective tissue disease or disorder. To have a child receive a diagnosis is almost impossible. There are very few places that will diagnose children. For males, the average diagnosis is approximately four to five years. In females, it averages up to about 10 years. I've spoke with patients who have waited up to 30 years to get a diagnosis, even though they know what they are looking for. Anybody under the age of 18, it's very difficult to get a diagnosis. Regarding adolescents with children
in EDS, these symptoms tend not to improve. They get worse over time. They followed in a study, 101 children with hypermobile EDS, and found that over time, urinary incontinence, orthostatic intolerance, diarrhea were very highly reported, pain, fatigue, poor postural control. This patient population is very understudied, particularly in children. There are very few therapists who are aware of this disease, and it seems very few physicians.
We have Dr. Cote here, who is a physical therapist, and she has to become educated on EDS because she works with these patient populations, and there's not a lot out there. She has to get as much help as she can, and she's trying to get these patients so they can function. If a doctor or a health care practitioner has difficulty identifying this disease, it's almost impossible for somebody who is not trained and knows what to look for in this disease to identify it. This is just one of several hundred connective tissue diseases.
There are many individuals who will never be diagnosed, and they may never get help, and they can also appear as abuse victims. It's essential that parents are given any medical information that physicians can find so that they can help them to find their child or children a physician or a diagnosis. And we're here not to speak about child abuse. We're here to protect patients, and we're here to make sure that people have every resource available to them. I've talked to a number of parents who have had their children taken away
because they are told that they are abusing their child and they cannot get a diagnosis for their child. We talk about genetic testing. Ms. Taylor is going to speak about that. For 90% of EDS patient populations, there is no genetic test available. And so what you have to do is an exhaustive panel to try to eliminate every other disease out there so that this
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
17:49
may be the one that shows up. I think one of the critical points that Dr. Lauda brought out in this situation is since most or many adults don't even know they have this condition,
they don't know to tell their obstetrician when they get pregnant. they don't anticipate this condition in their child because they don't even know they have it. So some of the witnesses in the audience here have experienced detached retinas, a vomiting disorder, and numerous other conditions that they went to this doctor and that doctor and that doctor, but no one doctor pulled it all together and said, you've got EDS or even investigated that possibility.
So a lot of adults are walking around in the dark not knowing what their symptoms mean. And with that, I'd like to
Speaker 50
18:39
turn it over to whichever one of you would like
Speaker 51
18:47
to speak now. Hi, my name is Andrea Taylor. I am the founding president of a nonprofit for arterial tortuosity syndrome called a twist of fate, ATS. I did not wake up one morning and decide that I want to be a global expert in arterial tortuosity syndrome,
but my son was diagnosed in 2010 here at Arkansas Children's because of Aiden's rarity. He is one in a million. ATS is very similar to QDIS, LAXA, EDS, vascular Ehlers-Danlos, Marfans. And because of my global advocacy and the nonprofit to help every patient have access to genetic testing, I started. Ms. Taylor, if you could get a little closer to the microphone.
Do you want me to start over?
No, I think most of them, but we just got a notice that somebody up here couldn't hear you. So if you'll just
Speaker 51
19:41
get a little closer, I think. Thank you. So I became a global leader advocating for patients to have better access to genetic testing and ended up working in the genetic testing industry starting in 2018. I am an expert in ATS, and I help write the medical journal articles that change the clinical guidelines for the condition, and therefore I work with many of the other connective tissue disorders
to learn, collaborate, and help grow awareness. These connective tissue disorders, it's not just EDS. It's all of them. Our children have very odd immune responses to falls, to, like, for example, my son fell at the YMCA in Oklahoma, bumped his head, and we had a goose egg that came out about two inches and was about the size of a small baseball, and so he required a CT, but we
were questioned very heavily about what happened in that incident. We can't help what happens as a body response with these conditions. Your connective tissue is very loose and rigid, and so your immune responses can be quite exaggerated with these conditions. Same thing happened when Aiden fell and broke his arm. He and his brother were playing on a little bicycle on carpeted floor, and the next thing we know, they flipped, and Aiden had a broke arm. And the same thing. You are questioned very, very rigorously, and I'm glad that that protection is in place for children that are abused.
But because of the connective tissue disorder, it is often parents that are very innocent and just trying to get care for their children are often made feel like they've done something wrong by bringing their children to the emergency room or to get care. there is access, like Dr. Lauder said, to genetic testing. Usually those patients would undergo extensive testing, such as whole exome or whole genome sequencing, which can be a great cost to
families. There's a lot of labs that can create good financial assistance policies for these families. But here in Arkansas, we have a hard time with Arkansas Medicaid covering whole exome and whole genome. And so we need to do a better job as a state to make sure that those funds are available for every patient that is needing genetic testing thank you my name is
Speaker 55
22:03
Cassandra Cole I'm an ER physician and so I kind of have been a unique intersection I also have hypermobile
Cassandra Cole
Unverified
22:09
EDS and actually only got diagnosed a year ago so get
a little closer yeah pull the microphone you can pull it toward you a little bit
Cassandra Cole
Unverified
22:17
there you go thank you my name is Cassandra Cole I'm an ER physician so I'm MD and so I kind of have a unique intersection so I've taken care of plenty of patients unfortunately in the state of Arkansas I have ended up on court stands that have been maltreated and so I'm very thankful that that system exists but also uniquely we're even taught in medical school like there's something called Mongolian spots so they're discolorations that
appear as bruises that normally people of color will have and more frequently and so we are taught to make sure you document that in the chart to make sure that if another clinician later on says, hey, this kid's getting abused, make sure they don't get falsely abused. So we are also taught in medicine to make sure to protect those patients, to know these things exist. But we are really not taught a ton about connective tissue disorders. We were taught that they were rare, but they are not rare. You're actually more likely to have a rare disorder because there are so many of them than you are to have type 1 diabetes. So I actually have hypermobile EDS. I got COVID and ended up
manifesting a lot of different complications from that which were all I guess grounded in the fact that I had hypermobile EDS and did not know so I made it through almost 40 years of life medical school and residency and the complications that go along with HEDS then hindsight makes sense without knowing that and so if I can do that as a highly educated professional that is taking care of these patients that is very easy for someone else to do and again I am so thankful for the protections we have, because I said, like, I have found kids that are getting abused. I have had to
report to the system. I have had to sit up on the stand and be a witness that's saying, yes, this is, you know, an injury that generally goes along with maltreatment. But that being said, people that have genetic disorders or connective tissue disorders, if you think about it, their building blocks are not normal. So things that we were taught that were saying, hey, if you have this injury there's no other way besides the fact that you were abused but if you're building blocks aren't normal you are going to respond differently to different forces so different bruising patterns
you're more likely to have bleeding abnormal bruising rashes so some kids have something called MCAS so MCAS are like your mast cells that cause allergic reaction lots of us have had hives or even like a reaction to a bug bite but some of those kids can get that even from just picking up so you just pick up the baby off the table and you put it down and all of a sudden they have red finger marks on them. It wasn't abuse. It was the fact that their skin is literally reacting to the fact that it's just getting touched. They're more likely to bruise. They're more likely to have abnormal fractures. And also they're more likely to have neurodivergence. We're starting to realize
that that is probably more of a neuro connective disorder and they all go along together. So then you have children that are going to react a little bit differently, even in their interactions with healthcare and their families and their parents. And so I really support what Senator Brown is doing I think everyone needs to be able to have access to these charts so we can have the most people looking up to make sure we're getting the best care for these patients because the parents need to be able to advocate for them and everyone taking care of these patients need to have access
to make sure that one we are taking care of these patients that truly are getting abused and we need to make sure that they are safe but also we need to make sure because there is harm in taking kids out of their families that don't belong out of their families and causing generational harm but also fear of the health care system and we don't want people being afraid of us we need to be able to we need to be the protectors of the patients when they come in and they need to feel
Speaker 39
25:52
safe being able to come to us thank you dr see i've got doc
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
25:56
i've got cole and coat here today this is dr cole
um thank you all very much i would like to bring some of the parents up now to speak. Oh wait. You have one other witness.
Chair
Unverified
26:09
I have one other witness. I do. Sorry. Hi. Good morning. My name is Rachel, DPT. I'm a physical therapist. Rachel Cody, C-O-T-E. So I wasn't taught EDS in school. The only reason why I knew of EDS is because my neighbor had EDS. She was going through MD-PhD program. She struggled a lot. She had three babies already and her body
was very different from an average mother postpartum. So I would go in pro bono and help her get stronger and all of that. But even starting to work as a physical therapist, I would come across patients with EDS diagnosis, but I kept, it was unsuccessful. So then that's when I started reaching out to Dr. Lauder and started learning more about it. And now, hopefully, people with EDS feel comfortable coming to see me for physical therapy.
So I'm here to talk about my perspective of people with connective tissue disorder and hypermobility spectrum disorder, of course, including EDS and other connective tissue disorders. This population, as a physical therapist, I hate to say people have fragile bodies. I hate to say that. So I would like to say their response to the environment is very different. So like many of us here already said, the bruising, the MAC response, the dislocation of limbs,
things like that happen so commonly. There are even stories of people getting in the bed, pulling the bed sheet over their legs and their ankle dislocating just from that minor pressure to the leg. So in physical therapy, I work with strengthening, but of course, they don't respond to regular strengthening regimen, no three sets of 10, no three times a week. It has to have a different approach. They have terrible proprioception that Dr. Laudo mentioned.
The definition of proprioception is your position sense of the lens in the space. If you don't have that because of the connected tissue disorder and your nerve wiring is very different from an average person, then you are more likely to sprain your ankle really badly, not being able to close your eyes in the bathroom or when you're washing your hair, all of that. So in physical therapy, that's something that we work on too.
But I would also like to bring up that the first thing I do when I see them is sit down and do history taking, and what I notice often is the level of physical trauma that they already went through, and so I totally acknowledge that they already get accused of so many different things, even malingering, and so that's why I wanted to be here and be supportive of this bill because, first of all, the family needs as much support as
they can and that includes proper care for the child and being able to seek medical treatments so if you have any questions I'm also here to answer any questions. Representative Collins you're recognized for a
question. Thank you madam chair
Representative Andrew Collins
Unverified
29:38
and I'm not sure exactly who is best to answer this but probably somebody up there. So I think that I understand what you guys are saying about these disorders
and situations. And of course, I think everybody probably doesn't want situations like that to be resulting in false accusations or misunderstandings of child abuse. And I understand that's exactly what you're trying to do with this interim study proposal. I think that my question really comes from the other side of the coin so and I'm talking now specifically about section three about the access to the medical records so can you guys imagine for me a situation where there's an accused abuser who in fact is an abuser and first why would they be denied access
to medical records typically is that at the discretion of the hospital or the health care provider because I would I don't I'm not an expert in this but my understanding
is that typically parents do have access to a child's medical records. So in what situation, just for starters,
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
30:44
would they not have access to the child's medical records? I'd like to answer that question. We really don't know why parents aren't. The Arkansas Children's Hospital is the only hospital
or the facility I have learned of that denies the medical records. and I had a conversation with Tiffany Wright with DCFS yesterday, and I was informed that if any other constituents came to me and said they could not get the medical records from Arkansas Children's Hospital to let them know any time of the day or night, and they would make sure that the person received their child's medical records,
provided they had not had their parental rights taken away. And so that's the big question. Why are parents being denied access to their child's medical records, and why, when the records are turned over to DCFS or to the parents, are they not getting the complete record? That's the big concern here. So do they already have that right under
Representative Andrew Collins
Unverified
31:56
law to get access to the medical records, or is it a matter of discretion for children who are other hospitals?
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
32:04
Well, that's part of what I want to cover in this study. That's why I want to go deeper into this. But according to HIPAA, parents have the right to their child's medical records because they are the custodian. They're the caregiver for that child. So they have the right to the child's medical records. I know that there are some situations that we might need to look at where a judge might say they can't have the medical records but if the judge has not said they cannot have them, there is no reason for children not to turn them over.
Now, there are situations, you're the attorney, you'll know the word, it's when you get something and only the judge sees it, or the judge sees it first. It's, I forget the word. Anyway, but let's say there are sensitive visual graphics. then there's controls that can be put on that where those records then are viewed by the judge before they go to the parent.
Representative Andrew Collins
Unverified
33:09
Okay, and just one more follow-up, if I may. So if you're saying that currently law provides
the parent with access to those records that they have to be turned over by the hospital, then I guess why are we having Section 3 saying that
they have to turn them over if
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
33:27
that's already the law? Well, it's not in statute. I believe, though, that it is every parent's constitutional right to have their child's medical records, but it's not in statute, and it's not being enforced.
Okay, thanks. Seeing no other questions, and you've got about eight minutes, so how do
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
33:50
you wish to? I want to hear a little bit from some people who have actually some parents. Okay. I have a couple of e-mails from one mother, and then I have three parents in the audience, and I would like for Sarah and Shailen and Shelly, Shelly, Shailen, and Sarah to come up.
Three S's. That's a tongue twister. But while they're coming up, I would like to read an e-mail that I received from one of Representative Nick Burke's, constituents. She wrote me in July, and I don't know that I ever responded to her, because sometimes our inboxes get so full, but when I searched for her name yesterday, I saw this July email. So I want to read it to you. I'm not going to say her name, because I don't know that it's okay with
her. Anyhow, on July 19, 2024, my husband and I brought our 10-day-old daughter to Arkansas Children's Hospital in Springdale due to a fever, 10-day-old daughter. She was quickly diagnosed with E. coli sepsis and decompensated into septic shock while awaiting admission. In the emergency setting, she underwent a lumbar puncture, liver ultrasound, head CT, and multiple x-rays, all of
which were normal at the time. Due to the severity of her condition, she was airlifted to Children's in Little Rock for higher level care. The following day, she required an emergency laparotomy as the infection had severely impacted her intestines. The day after surgery, a follow-up CT scan reportedly showed rib fractures and a liver laceration, and we were abruptly reported to Child Protective Services. Within 48 hours and without any physical evidence
or full investigation, my husband was arrested solely on a statement from Dr. Liza Murray, a child abuse pediatrician who claimed the findings were diagnostic of non-accidental trauma. This nightmare unfolded despite critical facts. No fractures or liver injury were present on admission. The initial liver ultrasound was completely normal. The alleged liver laceration appeared only after surgery, which has been reviewed and described by medical experts as
consistent with surgical lifting injury, not abuse. Dr. David Ayub, a well-known radiologist and medical expert, reviewed the imaging and confirmed our daughter had rachitic rosary, a clinical finding often misinterpreted as rib fractures with vitamin D deficient infants, and which explains the radiologic findings without implicating abuse. Thanks to the support of Michelle Widener of the Family Justice Resource Center,
we have been able to coordinate a medically supported, fact-based defense rooted in current pediatric radiology and metabolic science. Despite this, we continue to face the trauma of false criminal charges against my husband while we parent our daughters under a cloud of suspicion that has no medical foundation. Tragically, since coming forward, I have connected with at least four other mothers in northwest Arkansas who report nearly identical experiences, rushed abuse diagnoses, medically unsupported conclusions,
and devastating consequences for loving, attentive families. These are not isolated incidents. They reflect a broader systemic failure to properly investigate complex medical presentations before alleging criminal conduct. Representative Brown, I am begging for your help. Representative Brown, I think we
get the gist of it. I'm not trying to cut you off,
but you've got three other folks. And they're citizens that want to say something, and you've got four minutes.
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
37:58
Okay. Can you all be brief and tell about your experiences with not being able to receive
your medical records from Children's Hospital? And
Speaker 78
38:10
introduce yourself, and then. I'm Shelly Humphrey. December of 2022, our son was taken from us. We were falsely accused of abuse. When we went down to Children's to get the records, we were denied the records when we asked for them.
Speaker 80
38:34
of Quincy Culp. We went to Children's Hospital in March of 2018. My husband was accused of the alleged abuse and was arrested. And that very day, even before the doctor had actually seen him, to anywhere near diagnose him. While I have never been denied the medical records, my husband was, repeatedly, even after he was home and still had custody of our son.
Speaker 82
39:17
My name is Shaylin Jennings. However, my birth name is Laurel Jennings, L-O-R-Y-L. I have received my daughter's medical records, but however, I know I did not receive all of her medical records, especially her ER medical records. She has a lot of mental health medical records, and she's been in their psych ward multiple times. I know a lot of her medical records are locked, and they will not let me have them.
My daughter is diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos hypermobility. She was diagnosed in Washington State. We moved here in 2022. She has many notes in her medical records that are lies, stating that CPS was called on me in 2022. for living in our camper while we were waiting for our house to be finalized when we moved here and that was a lie. However, CPS was called on me in last year of 2024 stating that I have
Munchausen syndrome by proxy. They compared me to Gypsy Rose Blanchard, if you know who that is, in social media for killing her mom and they stated that I am making up every single one of daughter's medical records and forcing Children's Hospital to give me false letters for her IEP. My daughter is diagnosed with over 20 diagnoses under the EDS umbrella and I believe that BB School District is the one who reported
me to CPS and I've been reported twice now. The first one was just for my teenage daughter, the second one was for my teenage daughter and my six-year-old daughter, stating that I starve my children because my teenage daughter is now, again, under 100 pounds. Obviously, I don't weigh that much either, but my teenage daughter has a lot of mental health issues. But the biggest problem is, is my daughter has epilepsy, and she also has narcolepsy.
I have narcolepsy as well. And my daughter takes Topamax as well as Adderall. Both are weight loss symptoms due to the medication, and somebody stated that I was starving her. I do not starve my children. I feed them very, very well with very yummy-looking food, and she just can't handle eating enough. And she also has Crohn's disease, so that doesn't help her situation either. I don't know exactly who for sure reported me, but when I polled my daughter's medical records,
It states in there that her PCP reported to CPS for failure to thrive. My daughter has had failure to thrive almost her entire life. I was reported to CPS in Colorado when my daughter was first born because she had failure to thrive from birth to four years old. I've been struggling with my daughter's health since she was born, and it's been a struggle.
Ma'am, let me stop you right there because we recognize there's a long
history, obviously, there and maybe with others.
I think the question is, have you been able to get your records from Arkansas Children's? And I think you stated most of them, but maybe not the psych part of it. Is that
Speaker 82
42:46
correct? There's many records that I have not received and all over Children's. Okay. All
right. Thank you. Ladies, thank you very much for coming to the committee meeting this morning. We appreciate any time Arkansans come to testify before us.
Representative Brown, we're at the stopping point, but I'll give you a little bit of time to close for your ISP.
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
43:11
Thank you, Madam Chair. I would like to continue to
pursue this and probably modify my 2025 legislation, but I would like to work with DCFS and the professionals and the families that were here today and see if we can't craft something that's more workable and address the problem that we're having at Children's
Hospital. Members, you have heard the explanation of ISP 2025-041.
What's the wishes of the committee? Is there a motion to adopt? Oh, Representative Beatty, do you have a question or a comment? You're recognized. Thank you, Madam
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
43:55
Chair. I do have a question. Where's DHS? They're not
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
44:05
here today. Did you invite them to come to this meeting? No, I did not, but I met with them yesterday, and Representative Mary Bentley has an ISP, and she and I may join forces and combine our ISPs
or separate them somewhat, but we're in consultation with DHS. Okay, I mean, because
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
44:22
we spent a lot of time yesterday in committee going over very related issues along these lines. Something else that kind of causes me a little pause is the fact that DHS told you next time you have a parent that can't get their records from children, that they could work with them to get those records. I mean, I may be wrong, and members of this committee may disagree with me.
but why do we need a state agency getting involved to get records of the hospital according to law should be providing to our citizens sounds like maybe we need someone else maybe the attorney general or someone to get involved in that to get these records for our for our citizens would you agree i would agree and i'd
Speaker 90
45:12
be glad to speak with the attorney general i would encourage
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
45:15
you to do that thank you i think that would be better but i think dhs should have been here today this is along the same lines of what we sat through yesterday so we did not
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
45:27
address the the inability to get medical records though so i wanted to bring continue thank you thank you
and representing brown this is a bill that you've brought before the legislature before in several years past before aging children and youth
and then before judiciary isn't that true I
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
45:47
did not bring it last year. I pulled it down because I could see I was having opposition with the prosecuting attorneys. And the prosecuting, I believe it was the prosecuting attorney who, I'll be nice,
who someone whispered in the ears of the committee members and told them that my legislation would allow sexual predators to have access to sensitive photos to publish them on social media and although i did get some positive votes out of committee it did not pass out of committee and i think it was because of that frightening information yeah and this has been before aging children and youth also at correct aging children and youth in 2023 but i did not present it
in 2025 okay all right members oh representative collins
Representative Andrew Collins
Unverified
46:36
just a quick clarification so what is the significance of the vote this is our first interim
study all it all it's going to do would be to allow uh representing brown to continue to research this issue which i think she can do even without a vote
but okay thanks i mean that's what it does it's not it's not giving approval of the bill or anything like that because we don't take those kind
of votes in interim it's just so she can say she has an interim study and wants to go
ahead and continue all right any other discussion or questions what's the will of the committee I have a
motion any discussion on the motion all in favor of the motion to adopt ISP 2025 - 0 4 1 - 1 please say aye any opposed say no the eyes have it your motion the adoption has been granted thank you committee all right members next up we have a consideration for adoption ISP 2025-045
by representative Richardson representing Brown is there a sign-in sheet there at that table would
you get those the ladies that just came and testified to sign in we didn't have them on our agenda
just for our record thank you I appreciate that Representative Richardson, identify yourself and
Speaker 100
48:08
you're recognized to present your ISP.
Speaker 101
48:10
Thank you, Madam Chair. So I am Scott Richardson, State Representative from District 13, Northwest Arkansas.
I'm bringing before the committee the same bill that you guys have seen before and believe we got a little bit of support out of it, but not quite enough to bring it across the finish line. So I want to continue to work on this bill and attempt to get a bill that we can, at least for the most part, can stomach. I realize that this is a contentious issue and that there will be some members of the committee that probably won't be able to support no matter what changes we made.
But I think that there's enough room within this particular issue that we can find a common ground to move forward to help out these individuals. And I'll start my conversation with some of the challenges that we ran into during session as I present. This bill specifically is intended to create, if you will, a subclass of felons that have the right to retain or I should say have restored their protections for firearms.
Specifically, we're looking at individuals that are nonviolent, that are not a threat to society and have validated that they're not a threat to society by not only not having committed a violent felony, but also have had a cooling off period in which they have not been convicted of another felony, whether that's in this state or out. Now, some of the challenges that I ran into when we presented this bill during session included some things.
I know the state police were concerned with the bill associated with the updates to not only our internal database, but also the national database that they rely on when making stops and evaluating whether or not a person has a prior history. We were able to overcome those by being able to update both of those systems in the bill. There was also some conversations around whether or not this was already covered by the governor's ability to pardon.
I've done a lot of thinking on that particular issue, and I kind of want to share my thoughts on it. It is, in my opinion, and probably I think everyone would agree in this committee because we do it all the time, It is the job of the legislative body to determine and to apply an appropriate level of punishment for any particular issue. We do that regularly, and we saw that in the previous session. This is my first tour on this particular committee, but we saw at least a couple of bills in which we created or established a specific punishment associated with a particular offense.
And we did our best to ensure that that particular punishment fit the crime. I think in this particular case, this bill is requesting to do the exact same thing, in that what is appropriate for the event, the offense against society? What is appropriate for these individuals? And I think uniformly applying this idea of suspending rights associated with firearms,
but not only firearms, I think you could classify the right to vote even in this one, although obviously that would be a separate issue and not included in the context of this bill. I think applying that same rule of thumb to this particular group of individuals is a punishment, that I feel personally doesn't fit the the crime and the action. These are non-violent people. Why are we taking their gun rights away from them in the first place? But if we are going to take that
step and say that they need to be removed, then fine. What's the extent of that? How long should that last? This proposal suggests that 10 years after the offense, once they've completed their payment to society whatever fines associated court costs whatever jail time might be appropriate whatever it is these individuals could that are included in this particular bill could be anyone that has had maybe a drug charge associated with marijuana maybe a drug charge for prescription
there are lots of people that make mistakes get themselves in over their head and become addicted to things that they shouldn't they end up having to go through some rehabilitation they work very hard a lot of times to recover from those events but the damage is done should we continue to restrict that person's right to have a firearm for the entire life of them when they in fact have returned to what would consider be societal norms and I think that in this case I think we
can make the argument that that punishment does not and doesn't not fit the particular crime. The other the other thing that I would that I would suggest is we this list that's in here is there's a lot that's there and and I approached it from and you can approach it from either direction you can approach it from these are the ones we're going to allow or these are the ones we're going to exclude. I took the exclusion I felt like that that was a a better approach however it's easy to swap that around and do the inclusion I think that
there was some comment about that during session we were late and just sort of there was ran out of time and the ability to to make any more concessions or changes to that particular element to get it back in front of the committee in time for a vote so I'm happy to take and as you guys know at this point I'm always happy to make adjustments concessions and feel very firmly that it's only my bill as long as we don't vote on it and then it becomes our bill and then after
that it becomes the houses and continues forward so I'm happy to make whatever adjustments the committee feels is necessary but I do want to point out that I've had no less than 100 phone calls since session ended asking about the status of this bill. It is it has been the by far the number one I guess thing that I've had people call me on by far and I was kind of surprised by that
didn't realize there was that many people paying attention but there are a lot and I would suggest that most of us, if not once removed, have someone in our circle that this bill could potentially impact or one of their family members would impact. And I think that that warrants continued conversation, continued discussion, and for us to find as a legislative body some sort of solution. And with that, I don't have any witnesses, didn't bring any, didn't realize we
We're actually going to vote on it, but I'm open for
any kinds of discussions. Well, we're not voting on the bill. We're just voting on continuing this study.
Representative Jon S. Eubanks
Unverified
55:36
Representative Eubanks, you're recognized for a question. Thank you, Madam Chair. Representative Richardson, I don't know if you've looked at other states, but I think Florida has a process where people can have their gun rights restored. I actually had a family member in Florida that unfortunately became addicted to drugs 30-plus years ago, And has been clean and sober since, and I've actually written letters to then-Florida AG Pam Bondy on his behalf, and they actually do an investigation.
But I think there are circumstances where there are people that have unfortunately committed crimes, and I think there's cases where they should possibly be restored their gun rights. So, Madam Chair, I'd make a motion to adopt ISP. Members, before I
take up the motion, is there any other questions or comments? Representative
McCullough, you're recognized. Thank you,
Representative Tippi McCullough
Unverified
56:34
Madam Chair. I guess one of the things that we hear a lot in our committee is that laws are deterrents.
And so if a person knows that if they break the law and they commit
Speaker 107
56:50
a felony that they're going to lose their gun rights, I
Speaker 103
56:55
mean, that's, you know, sort of one of those deterrents. Can
Speaker 101
57:00
you speak to that? I think I can. And maybe it's just based on a lot of my own opinion, but I think it's also if we do enough research, we can discover that the reality is that when we're talking about things like an inalienable right, like a protection of oneself or use of oneself, it warrants a conversation, I guess, from an overall perspective of whether or not the specific event warrants that ongoing.
If you have a violent circumstance, absolutely I can understand why a law like this or a felony like this would leverage the addition of loss of gun rights, right? I can see how that would be a deterrent, but this is a nonviolent individual, right? They haven't committed a violent act against society. So leveraging a punishment associated with loss of gun rights and loss of other rights like necessarily voting,
I don't think is an applicable deterrent for them versus jail time and things of that nature. I'll also suggest that criminals are going to do criminal things. This particular law that's on the books, we know already that there are plenty of people out there that still go deer hunting and take up arms, even though they're supposed to not.
And so I think that the reality is the only people that this particular element is keeping from their firearms is the people that are law-abiding. And that's the people that we probably shouldn't be punishing. A quick follow-up,
Representative Tippi McCullough
Unverified
58:45
Madam Chair. And that is a concern of mine. You bring up a couple of points about that there might be other situations to where we open it up, to where we kind of start cherry-picking what felonies are okay to do certain things and what felonies are not,
which I think maybe sometimes complicates some of the laws that we have. But anyway, that's a concern. Just in a
Speaker 101
59:12
quick response to that, I agree. I'm not a lawyer, but I don't appreciate – that wouldn't be something that I would want to do. That's not a level. But our laws are complicated, and I think just as a legislative body, we still have a responsibility to establish appropriate punishment for the crime, and I keep coming back to that. Is it appropriate for someone who has not created a circumstance where they've been violent to society?
Is it appropriate for us to permanently remove their gun rights? And I don't feel that it
is. Representative Tosh, you're recognized for a
Representative Dwight Tosh
Unverified
59:49
question. Thank you, Madam Chair. Representative, I know you and I have had conversations about this, and I was looking at your ISP, And I see where you have eight years of what I refer to as a cleansing period. I can't remember your terminology, but that's mine. So is there a reason for that? I was thinking the standard for that, that other states have applied, has been 10 years.
So I'm just curious where you, why in eight years? Actually, I
Speaker 100
1:00:18
think you're looking at, and remember, it's been a month or two since I've
Speaker 101
1:00:24
really dove into the writing of this but it's my under the 10 years is on a different section that's actually specifically associated with the governor's current rights as a that's already in law in statute the governor's right which is on the previous if you're looking at page three
Speaker 100
1:00:44
line two that's associated with the governor's right to grant parting that's not associated with um the 10 10 years and the 10 years is on a different page that is more toward the end um yep it's on uh line 11 page 5 page 5 yes sir and while you're
Speaker 101
1:01:09
looking at that i wanted to respond to representative eubanks just quickly uh yes there are like 28 states in my research
that currently have the restoration for these things. Fifteen of those states for these types of nonviolent things, 15 of those don't even take the gun rights away at all. Obviously, if they have to go to prison, they can't take their guns with them, but they don't take that right away from them. So this is not new by any stretch. You good, Representative
Tosh? Okay. Any other questions? Seeing no other questions, we do have a motion to adopt the interim study.
Any discussion on the adoption of interim study number 2025-045? Seeing no discussion, all in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, say no. The ayes have it. We have adopted. You can continue to study. Members, we have come to the conclusion of what we have on our agenda. We do have other business. I want to remind everybody in this room that at 1.30 in the old Supreme Court room over
in the Capitol, we have Christmas for the DHS kids, so please come, help fill the room. It's always a great event if you're new and have never been, so please come. That's at 1.30 in the old Supreme Court room. Seeing no further of business, thank you for your time today. We are adjourned. Thank you.
Agenda
A. Call to Order
B. Consideration to Approve September 30, 2025, Meeting Minutes [Exhibit B]
C. Consideration for Adoption of ISP 2025-041 – An act to amend “Quincy’s Law” concerning physical exams and other testing in an investigation involving alleged abuse under the child maltreatment act; to provide for the right of a parent, guardian, or custodian to be provided with the medical records of a child who has been removed from the custody of the parent, putative parent, guardian, or custodian or is in the custody of the Department of Human Services; to declare an emergency; and for other purposes [Exhibit C]
D. Consideration for Adoption of ISP 2025-045 by Representative R. Scott Richardson – An act to amend the law concerning possession of a firearm by certain persons; to permit the restoration of the right to possess a firearm to a nonviolent felon; and for other purposes [Exhibit D]
E. Other Business
F. Adjournment
Documents
Speakers
Representative Carol Dalby Chair
Unverified
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
Speaker 22
Speaker 32
Speaker 39
Ryan James
Unverified
Speaker 50
Speaker 51
Speaker 55
Cassandra Cole
Unverified
Chair
Unverified
Representative Andrew Collins
Unverified
Speaker 78
Speaker 79
Speaker 80
Speaker 82
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
Speaker 90
Speaker 100
Speaker 101
Representative Jon S. Eubanks
Unverified
Representative Tippi McCullough
Unverified
Speaker 107
Speaker 103
Representative Dwight Tosh
Unverified