State lawmakers got into a procedural standoff Friday over whether the Legislature must hold a public hearing on a ballot initiative that seeks to enact a "red flag" gun law in the state.
Earlier this year, the Maine Gun Safety Coalition submitted enough signatures for a ballot initiative proposing a "extreme risk protection order" law. Also known as "red flag" laws, these allow family members to ask a court to order someone to temporarily relinquish their guns if they pose a danger to themselves or others. This would be an expansion of Maine's "yellow flag" law, which only allows police to initiate the gun confiscation process with the courts.
But Democrats and Republicans on the Legislature's Judiciary Committee sparred Friday over whether they had to hold a public hearing on the issue before sending it to voters. Republican members pushed back against a decision by the committee's Democratic leadership to forego a public hearing.
"According to state law, if we don't have a public hearing on this bill, it's against the law," said Rep. Rachel Henderson, R-Rumford.
"And I guess I would point out that the constitution is different than the statute — and I think the constitution takes precedent over the statute," replied committee co-chair Democratic Sen. Anne Carney, D-Cape Elizabeth.
Any citizen initiative that qualifies for the ballot must first to go the Legislature, which has three options for dealing with the proposal. Lawmakers can adopt the proposed law as written, thereby eliminating the need for a statewide vote. The second avenue is to send the initiative to voters without any changes. And the third option is to send both the original proposal and a different "competing measure" to voters for consideration.
State law says that any citizen's initiative "must be afforded a public hearing" by a legislative committee unless two-thirds of the members of both the House and Senate vote to skip that step. But as Carney pointed out, Maine's Constitution is silent on the issue of a public hearing.
Politics appear to be at play in Friday's disagreement, which comes as lawmakers rush to finish their work by mid-June.
Republicans and gun owners' rights groups oppose red flag laws — and a public hearing is a high-profile way to air that opposition. Democratic Gov. Janet Mills has also said she stands firmly by Maine's yellow flag law, which she helped craft in 2019 as an alternative to a red flag proposal that was pending in the Legislature.
Republicans on Friday accused the Democratic committee members of "ignoring clear legal precedent and silencing public input."
"Public input is not optional. It's the foundation of democracy," read a statement from the committee's four GOP members: Henderson, Sen. David Haggan of Hampden, Rep. Jennifer Poirier of Skowhegan and Rep. Elizabeth Caruso of Caratunk.
But Carney and the House co-chair, Rep. Amy Kuhn, D-Falmouth, pointed out that the committee discussed forgoing a public hearing on the ballot initiative two weeks ago. And none of the GOP members raised any concerns at that time.
"It's been radio silence," Kuhn said. "So it feels honestly unfair to come in today and say that this unfair thing has happened when we actually tried to be very deliberately transparent on mic. I'm sorry that on our final day of committee we are in this posture with each other. But that was done deliberately to avoid this kind of 11th hour situation."
Roughly 20 states have some form of red flag law; Maine is the only state with a yellow flag law that only allows police to initiate the process. Maine's law also requires a medical professional to determine that an individual poses a risk to themselves or others before their firearms can be temporarily taken away.
Backers of the ballot initiative argue that Maine's yellow flag law is too narrow because it does not allow family members to directly petition a judge to remove a loved one's guns if they are suicidal or threatening harm to others.
The push to adopt a red flag law in Maine gained new momentum following the October 2023 mass shooting in Lewiston that left 18 people dead. Family and friends had raised concerns with police and with leaders of the gunman's Army Reserve unit about his deteriorating mental health in the months before the shooting. But local police never sought to use the yellow flag law to take away his guns.
Since the Lewiston shootings, utilization of the yellow flag has increased dramatically.
