This week is “crossover” week in the North Carolina legislature — a reference to the cutoff date for bills set by House and Senate leaders. With a few exceptions, the only policy bills that will remain viable for the rest of the two-year session are bills that pass either the House or the Senate by Thursday. Both chambers are expected to be extremely busy.
Spending bills, constitutional amendments, study bills, bills that affect only a handful of counties, and resolutions are exempt from the crossover deadline. There are also multiple ways around it, including adding state funding to a policy bill, or amending or even replacing the language in a bill that met the deadline, sometimes called a “gut and amend.”
Still, the deadline is generally respected as a way to separate the relatively few bills that have a chance at passing from the hundreds of others that don’t. But with 170 lawmakers trying to get their top priority bills through, the days before crossover feature overflowing agendas and very long voting sessions, often stretching till midnight on crossover day in years past.
With 120 members, the state House tends to be busier on crossover week than the 50-member Senate. The House Rules committee is the last stop before a vote on the House floor, and members are set to consider more than 20 bills Monday. Among them:
House Bill 301, which would ban social media accounts for children under 14 and require parental permission for children who are 14 and 15 years old. Companies that own social media platforms such as TikTok, Facebook and Instagram say they already have a minimum age of 13 to create an account, in compliance with federal law. But some children can easily get around the bans, both with and without their parents' consent, and many younger kids have social media accounts.
HB301 would hold the social media companies responsible for stopping them, with the state fining them up to $50,000 for each time a younger teen slips through the cracks and is able to set up an account against the rules. Families of those teens would also be allowed to sue the companies over violations, for up to $10,000. The ACLU has argued against the bill, saying it would deny children access to information.
House Bill 519, meanwhile, would give North Carolina parents more access to their children's medical records and details about conversations between their children and health care providers. It would grant parents more insight into their child’s health by repealing existing laws that grant the child privacy in some circumstances. Supporters say parents need more access to that information.
Critics of the bill fear that minors won’t seek out the help they need if they know their parents will accompany them to the examination room or have access to their medical records. Under current law, minors can consent to some medical care — treating sexually transmitted diseases, pregnancy, mental health, and substance abuse — without needing approval from their parents.
The bill would roll back that law so that it only allows minors to consent for treatment related to pregnancy, excluding abortion services. Physicians could also conduct examinations without a parent present if they believe the child could be suffering from parental abuse or neglect that would require a report to social services under the law.