 Oh, as you can see, our agenda is fairly loose today. And we may come back to committee this afternoon after the floor to do some work. That is to be determined. But for this morning, we will have a review of the constitutional amendment, clarifying the prohibition of enslavery and indentured servitude. And then you will have some time after that this morning to do some constituent service or, I don't know, go get some balloons for your friend. At any point, friend, do you have one, do you have a friend? If you have a camera sketch already. Oh, it's yes. It's a little early, though, to know exactly what's going to stick, right? Some people need a lot of practice. Oh, look at that. Someone's ringing. Somebody wants to say hello. I'm sorry. I'm going to turn the volume on. Oh, off on this unit? Well, we're going to answer that, since we're not actually started yet. How do you think that we did last April or May? Maybe it was. I don't know. Probably it was April. Betsy Enrasque, Legislative Council. I'm reviewing with you a proposal, too, as passed the Senate that clarifies that slavery and indentured servitude and reform are prohibited. Let's just do a refresher, though, first about that constitutional amendment process. Thanks for mentioning it, Madam Chair. We do have a document. You can find it right on your home page. Here's your House Committee on Gavok's home page. If you do want to just have access to that constitutional amendment procedure doc, it's listed right on your home page under additional information, so you can just click on that. And there's a document that provides all the details for how to amend the Vermont Constitution. I won't go through all of it in detail, but the big picture is that constitutional amendments is a long process. It's two bienniums followed by a vote of the voters. So we're not even halfway through this process right now. Constitutional amendments have to start in the Senate, and they can only be introduced every other biennium. So this is a biennium in which amendments can be proposed, and then it has to go to the House. And the House's options are to either adopt it as is or not adopt it. The House cannot amend a constitutional amendment after it's left the Senate. It's essentially locked in. Just to clarify that point, does a House have to act one way or the other so an amendment could get sent to committee and by inaction, that would be the same as not adopting it? That's correct. The House is not required to take an up or down vote, so it's like any other piece of legislation that it could hang on your wall if this committee chooses not to pursue it. So it's either not take action or approve it as is, what the language has written. The House rules do require that if you will consider a proposal that there has to be public hearing and you did hold that public hearing last session. It was the after legislative hours, public hearing in room 11 that you held on the issue. And as the Chair had stated, there is a longer notice period for landings. Constitutional amendments have to be on the notice calendar. It's notice for four legislative days and then action on the fifth legislative day. So that's where we are right now, your consideration of whether to vote the proposal out of committee as written by the Senate. So I'll actually go into the text of the amendment now. I do have an overview document posted here so that you can have an overview of the actual language itself and then some of the background on this issue. So I'm going to try to remember how to do this. Yay. I believe that would do it. It's the teacher. So here's the overview of the amendment itself. We've already taken a look at the amendment procedure. So what this proposal would do is amend the second half of our very first article over the Mont Constitution, chapter one, article one to clarify that slavery and ventured servitude in any form are prohibited, which is the constitutional law by the U.S. Constitution. You can see the language of this first chapter, this first article of our Vermont Constitution begins. Now it's over. No. Sorry about that. So I'll back up. The language that's at issue in this chapter one, article one currently reads that no person born in this country were brought over from sea ought to be holding by law to serve any person as a servant, slave or apprentice after arriving to the age of 21 years unless bound by the person's own consent after arriving to that age or bound by law for the payment of debts, damages, fines, costs, or the like. So a big picture of this proposal would strike that language and as a substitute say that slavery and indentured servitude in any form are prohibited. The way that this proposal is set up, it starts off with a section one purpose section. These have not always been provided in constitutional proposals, but more recently the legislature has been including these purpose for anyone going to look at the document to have a summary of what the purpose is supposed to do. But if this gets to the stage of going to the voters, the practice has not been to include that purpose section on the general election ballot. So right now this purpose section is really for informational purposes now as it's moving through the legislative process. On the general election ballot, voters would only see the actual text of the section to be amended. But for the purpose as stated in proposal two, it provides that this proposal would amend the constitution of the state of Vermont to clarify that slavery indentured servitude in any form are prohibited. Then section two goes into the actual text of that article one. You can see that that language that we currently have in regards to slavery indentured servitude would be repealed and in place that language, that explicit statement that slavery indentured servitude in any form are prohibited. And then section three provides the effective date. This is the standard effective date for constitutional proposals. It would be upon ratification by the voters of the 2022 general election. It makes it through that process, which again requires concurrence by the House this session. And then next by any and they would go back to the Senate, start over again, they would have to be adopted in the exact same form that it leaves now, and then the House would again have to approve it. And then it would go to the voters and if they approve it, this would be at the 2022 general election. This document then provides some background regarding this constitutional text here. It's remained relatively unchanged since it was first added in our 1777 Vermont constitution. That's Vermont's first constitution. The first half of this article provides that people are born equally free and independent and have certain natural inherent and unalienable rights, which are enjoying and defending life and liberty, acquiring, possessing and protecting property and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety. The second half then of this article one begins with therefore, which seems at least to indicate to me that the second half is of the article as a result of those rights that were just stated. It says, right now, therefore, no person born in this country or brought over from sea ought to be holding by law to serve any person as a servant slave or apprentice after arriving to the age of 21 years unless bound by the person's own consent after arriving to such age or bound by law for the payments of debts, damages, fines, costs and the like. So if you look at this language now, a literal reading of the language does imply that there is an age qualification on which a person can no longer be required to be a servant slave or apprentice that 21 year age. After that, our constitution by a literal reading of it provides that after a person reaches that age, they can't be bound by law to serve as a servant slave or apprentice. I think that is really the big issue that this proposal represents to address that age qualification language in the constitution. So our 1777 constitution has been described as being based largely on the 1776 Pennsylvania constitution but the PA constitution did not have the second part regarding restrictions on a person being a servant slave or apprentice. That was added specifically by the Vermont Framer so it wasn't borrowed from Pennsylvania. That's unique to Vermont's constitution. This is kind of a different question but when you refer to that being read literally. Aren't there a couple competing, I guess, views about that and you know I'm going with this? Yes. Sorry, but do you wanna keep going? No, if you get my gist on you. I do. I'm gonna talk more about the history of slavery and indentured servitude later in this document and maybe we can have a fuller conversation of that. And I wasn't looking to tailor specifically that but just as far as there are some people that the constitutions are living, grieving documents or those that feel that it should be literally interpreted. Okay, thank you. One thing to keep in the back, when we look at a document, we are a constitution. One of the things that to look at in constitutional construction is what was happening at the time that the language was put into the constitution but we'll get to that, I have more information on this in some way out here. Thank you. So this language in article one has only changed three times since 1777. Here, there's a link to a history of amendments to our Vermont constitution if you wanna take a look at it real quick. Here it is. So here we have the original language. Here's what it used to look like if you wanna compare. It started out in 1777 by saying that all men are born equally free and independent. Now we use persons, we'll get to that in a minute. And then provided though our rights, acquiring, possessing and protecting property, enjoying and defending life and liberty, pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety. That language hasn't changed but the language regarding slavery and indentured servitude has changed. The original language used to say therefore no male person born in this country or brought over from sea ought to be hold by law to serve any person as a servant slave or apprentice after he arrives to the age of 21 years nor female in like manner after she arrives to the age of 18 years unless they're bound by their own consent after they arrived to such age or bound by law for the payments of debts, damages, fines or costs of the like. So you see how it started out, there was a difference in age between men and women. In our second constitution, the 1786, there was no change in this language. In the 1793 constitution, there was just a slight change in the punctuation of the therefore, making it all one sentence. And then after the 1924 amendment to our constitution which came after women were granted the right to vote the language changed to just say therefore no person born in this country ought to be brought over from sea held by law to serve a person as a servant slave or apprentice after he arrives to the age of 21 years. So it eliminated the distinction of ages between men and women to say people generally can't be held as servant slaves or apprentice after they arrived at the age of 21. And then finally in 1994, the Supreme Court justices revised it to make that language gender neutral. So now we just have the all people language maintaining that 21 year age qualification. If they went, did I redirect you to the address some of that in 1994? So 1994 was the requirement that the Vermont Supreme Court justices revised the entirety of the Vermont constitution to make it in gender neutral language or gender inclusive. So they went to the constitution and wherever it said he, they would make it in gender neutral. Yes. And it was not for the specifically language that our constitution says it's not for any substantive change. It was only in those gender neutral changes. So that 94 amendment was not substantive. So that's a summary of how that language has changed. Then we get to the 13th amendment of the US constitution because this law always reigns supreme. Our 13th amendment to the US constitution was ratified in 1865. The 13th amendment provides that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude except as a punishment for crime where the party shall have been really convicted shall exist within the United States or any place subject to the jurisdiction. I want to highlight that term involuntary servitude versus what our article one uses now which talks about being a servant slave or apprentice and the language, proposed language of your proposal. Oh, I'm losing my tabs. Jim, sorry. I'm joking. Sorry, one sec. The language of your proposed amendment is to say indentured servitude in any form is prohibited. I think there's an important difference between those two terms, involuntary servitude and indentured servitude. The court, US Supreme Court in 1988 discussed that not all labor that's compelled by physical coercion or force of law violate the 13th amendment. The US Supreme Court is stated by its terms, the amendment, the 13th amendment to the US constitution excludes involuntary servitude imposed as a legal punishment for crime. For example, if you're required to serve, for example, in jail, you're really not knowing things, I'm not going there voluntarily. You're involuntarily serving. The court has also stated that the prohibition against involuntary servitude in the 13th amendment doesn't prevent a state or the federal government from compelling their citizens by threat of criminal sanction to perform certain civic duties like upholding jury service, military service, or road work. So I think there's an important distinction between involuntary servitude generally and the language that is being proposed and proposal to which is indentured servitude. And we'll get back to indentured servitude in a moment and talk about the historical use of indentured servitude at the time or how indentured servitude was actually used in practice in the late 1700s and 1800s. This summary also goes over the history, general, very briefly, the history of slavery in Vermont. There's an 1802 Vermont Supreme Court case that you have access to here that's been cited as a contemporary statement that article one prohibited all forms of slavery. In that case, the Vermont Supreme Court stated our state constitution was express, no inhabitant of the state can hold a slave. However, on the flip side, in testimony, this case has also been criticized since it was in regard specifically to a Supreme Court justices responsibility regarding a woman who was enslaved. Also, just historical research, if you poke around, you can find that while the Vermont Constitution specifically prohibited slavery, people of color were enslaved in the state during the time, even though we had that language in our Vermont Constitution. Although I also have found in 1820, a Vermont governor's address also lamented Vermont not doing more to advocate against allowing another state into the union without a provision in its constitution restricting the power of enslaving a part of the human family. So there was the message in our constitution and overall the public officials statements on slavery at the time, but in practice it does seem that slavery did continue for people in the state while we had that language. Now let's get to indentured servitude. Getting back to that language in the Vermont Constitution that has that age qualification, that people can't be held as a servant's labor apprentice after they reached the age of 21 years. While we had that, the Vermont Supreme Court in 1837 appeared to acknowledge, at least in my reading, that a Vermont Constitution provided an age-based restriction on indentured servitude when it was adjudicating in a state case. The language in that case said that girls being more than 18 years of age could not by our law be treated as infants or minors. At common law, males and females were upon equal footing in this respect, but that section of the Bill of Rights in the Constitution of this state, which declares involuntary servitude illegal and not allowable after males arrived at the age of 21 and females at the age of 18 has always been considered fixing the age of majority of females at 18. And this was a contemporaneous construction with the adoption of the Constitution. In that reading, it seems to acknowledge that there was indentured servitude for people under, for minors, who didn't reach the age of majority, which at the time in 1837, for females was 18 and males at 21. And this is consistent with some of the research that Professor Teachup provided to you on indentured servitude. He provided this handout to you that went through, he provided his own testimony on this issue, but then he actually provided, here's some ads for workers for indentured servants. Here's a contract for indentured servitude. This is for minors, apprentices. Here is actually a form book that he found from 1847 that presented contracts for minors to reform indentured servitude, and you can look back at the history that he provided about this, where people were actually, if you wanted to come over to the U.S., you could come over on this contract that you would be working for somebody. But our Constitution then said after you reach the age of majority, you couldn't be bound to that indentured servitude. So I think that's why there's a specific, a definite choice to not use the overall term involuntary servitude, which could include things like jury service. If you don't wanna go there, you're being required involuntarily to serve versus the indentured servitude, which was the term, referencing the term at the time of what was actually happening with minors who were forced to work, and there were even contracts for that work while our Constitution had that language saying that after a certain age, you couldn't be required to serve any person as a servant-slaver apprentice. Trying to get back to the actual doc for some reason I can't find it. I'm gonna have to brush up on my IT. That was an overview of what I wanted to review with you, Adam Chair, but is there anything that I didn't address that you want me to discuss? Questions, committee? Jim? So from a practical standpoint, we don't allow slavery, any age, but not changing the Constitution, does not change the law in Vermont. That's correct. Conversely, changing it, is there anything that would, as a consequence, change practice or law in Vermont today? To not change it? To change it. To change it? With this language, I don't think so. So you mentioned your resurface, I mean. Is something that is correct, yes. And to emphasize what I was saying, by the use of the phrase indentured servitude, that's really discussing people being indentured servants, having to work under contract against their will. Under that historical phrase indentured servitude, as it was known at the, as it had been used at the time of this language, when it was originally enacted. So, but making this change wouldn't impact, call to jury duty, if the draft was reinstituted for monitors could still be drafted. So none of that. So this is really a perception and how one looks at it and I get it, that it might be interpreted that at one time, we allow slavery under certain conditions or indentured service and the amendment would change that. Perception. Perception. Yes. Okay. Vermont Supreme Court is the final interpreter of the Constitution. So I know from, it is my belief from my handling of this and from all the testimony to date that this is not supposed to have any sort of effect on current practice. It is not intended, as I understood all the testimony to date and my understanding of this is that it is not meant to have any impact on things like jury service or require a draft or incarceration of people when they've been adjudicated of a crime. I can never say with certainty what the Vermont Supreme Court would, how the Vermont Supreme Court would adjudicate this, but there has been no indication from any of the testimony to date that it would have any substantive impact on the laws that currently stand. So let me pursue this a little bit. When we held a public hearing last spring, there was one witness, I believe, that suggested that there be no reference to slavery, just straight that section. And I understand that point of view as well, that it's kind of a reminder of the past that was in place at one time. But if we struck it, would there be any practical or real, not that we can, but if the Senate gave us another option? If we struck that section, would there be any practical or real action as a result in Vermont today, Vermont law? No. So our choices are to adopt it as is, in which case there's really no change, or ask the Senate to give us another one, just take it all out and there'd be no change. Yes. Thank you. Also just want to mention, going back to court interpretation is that we've got a Vermont Supreme Court and we've got our US Supreme Court and to reiterate that US Supreme Court case that made clear that the state and federal governments can still be compelled to be required to impel their citizens to perform certain duties. Just wanted to make, I just wanted to emphasize that our US Supreme Court has already made that statement. Any other questions for Betsy Ann? Just going back to that, our prior questionnaire as far as the liberal interpretation, so let's just say hypothetically, and this is clearly hypothetical, but if somebody had in person that was an indentured sewer to a male under 21 now, could they literally point to that language and say it's legal in these days? No, it would be a crime to hold someone against their will to perform labor against their will unless it was incarceration or a jury service. Even though that the constitution appears to say that, in other words, I mean it's very clear that it's illegal and it's not, it's immoral and all the other stuff, but why not the liberal interpretation of the language? No, I don't think so. By the 13th Amendment, it's the US Constitution that provides neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime while the party has been duly convicted. Shall exist in the US or any place? And that should be our, yes. Good, thank you. This law always controls. Any other questions for Betsy Ann? Who knows this front word and backward and is able to answer all sorts of questions? I very much appreciate your favor. Thank you for us of these various documents. I would love to take a few minutes here to offer time for questions, discussion amongst the committee so that we can decide what we need to do in advance of an anticipated vote on this on Friday. So if anyone has questions, concerns, suggestions, requests, or if you've already formed your opinion about what we're looking at in proposition to open up the floor. Jim, and then I see Rob sort of looking like I'm not supposed to say something. I'm trying to walk him out. Maybe we can just go around the table. Sorry, but Jim. I have absolutely no problem with making the change and I will support the issue if that's what we vote on. I'm curious if you can maybe unfair for you to characterize it, but there was at least one dissenter in this on the proposal because that senator felt that changed the historical look back of our constitution. Would you? Okay, sorry, that's fine. I mean, no, but it sounded like a professor teach out initially had that same perspective, but then came around as he listened to more opinions and testimony on the change of characterizing what he said. I will leave that back here. I'm just changing the constitution is a big deal and while this on the surface seems straightforward and a positive thing to do, given that people can interpret that we allow certain things at one time, it may be worth, I think it was Senator McCormick given him just a couple of minutes of what was, why did he oppose it? I mean, it's not easy to be one out of 30 or one out of 150 to vote differently on something. I would just maybe inform it. That's all. I'm not saying it would change anything. Brown? I'm totally fine with the way that it is. I'll see you. Mike? Hi, I'm ready to vote. I'm ready to vote. Okay. I'm just going to go right now and control one of the questions. Marcia, questions, concerns, more information you need. Just a question, and I'm perfectly fine with this also, but some people constituents have said that the word slavery should be removed entirely. It should not even be present in the constitution, the law's constitution. So I wonder why when this was written, it was included, can you give us any? I really hesitate to try to pass on other people's perception. Didn't Professor Hitchcock talk about that during this presentation? If anyone can shed light on that, I appreciate it. I don't know if his presentation was also written, but I think he did because of written testimony. He did it like this. I think his main point was that he thought something would be lost in history by making changes, but I think he, in the end, he turned around and thought that it wouldn't be personal belief that the way data is kept today and stuff this, nothing's lost in history. What ends up is you're changing history. You're making history by making the changes, and I think that's what we're here for, is to do the correct thing, and if this is the correct thing, we should be voting for it. I do understand that. I'm just asking about the one word slavery, not the concept that's trying to be achieved here. His concern was that you're gonna erase that, which... And it has, that word has in history. Yes. Okay. Thank you. John, thoughts, questions, concerns? Now I'm ready to vote. I think with respect to keeping slavery and indentured servitude in the constitution, as this proposal would do, reminds us of our history, and I think it's important to remember the history of this country and that. You know, slavery and indentured servitude exists in Vermont and the country into the 19th century. I don't think we wanna forget that. We're, you know, people, now we're sensitive to that issue, but you know, people are 100 years from now, because this is a living document, and that's important, that people may forget our discussions here. You know, if you don't have to go on this constitution. J.P.? Totally in favor of it, that's proposed. We'll skip over the anti-chair, but how? Sure. I think this is an important language change in our constitution, and for some of the reasons that John just stated, and I think it's equally important that we have clarity that once and hopefully forever, we have drawn the line as a state that has the acclaim to be a state that didn't allow slavery. It's just not ambiguous anymore. And if we're gonna really deal with institutional racism, we have to have a foundation in our constitution that takes us in a different direction. So I think this is an important step for hopefully dealing with that issue as well. Nelson? I'm ready to vote. Excellent. So we will have our committee agenda reflect that Friday morning after the floor we'll come back to this. And in the meantime, if you wanna track down the lone senator and have a conversation with him, I'm not hearing a great cry. I support the amendment and it actually may be a good compromise between taking it out all together and those who want to preserve some sense of history in our constitution. I'm totally fine. I just take our responsibility for very, very seriously, anytime we amend the constitution. A law we can pass and change next year, but not the constitution. So he had a perspective. Quite frankly, I wouldn't have expected him to have that perspective, but he did. You know, but maybe there's nothing to be gained. I don't know. I just throw it out there. We will come back to this on Friday. Thank you, Beth. Thanks.