Missed deadline kills anti-drag, university election bills
More than 30 bills died Friday when lawmakers adjourned before getting to them. Among those proposals were bills attacking Drag Queen Bingo and establishing elections for UW trustees.
Legislative proposals targeting drag events and adding elected positions to the University of Wyoming Board of Trustees are now dead.
They died Friday alongside more than a dozen other bills that missed their chance to be heard on the Senate floor before the deadline to do so. In the House, another 19 bills died by missing the same deadline.
But House Bill 134, the anti-drag legislation, and House Bill 148, the legislation enabling statewide elections for UW trustees, were perhaps most relevant to Laramie.
While the former targeted a beloved local event, the latter stood to hand greater control of UW’s governance to those “disappointed” by what they see in Laramie.
As the 2025 General Session of the Wyoming Legislature winds down, the only bills remaining have already passed in their chamber of origin and are now being vetted by the chamber “down the hall.”
These bills face a cascading series of deadlines that continue this week; bills must pass second reading by adjournment today and third reading by adjournment tomorrow.
Lawmakers are scheduled to wrap up the session before the weekend.
Anti-drag bill targeted Laramie AIDS fundraiser
HB134 sought to prohibit the state from spending taxpayer funds on any “sexually explicit” events. While the legislation stood to ban a wide range of possible events, it specifically targeted drag, defining as “sexually explicit” any “drag queen event.”
“This bill ensures that taxpayer money is not used to support events that some may find inappropriate or offensive, keeping government spending aligned with community standards and values,” legislation sponsor Rep. Joel Guggenmos (HD-55) told the House Education Committee exactly one month ago. “The bill creates accountability and discourages public institutions from financially supporting events that may be considered inappropriate by the majority of the taxpayers.”
HB134 grew directly out of right-wing attacks on Laramie’s annual Drag Queen Bingo. The event has been hosted in the Gem City for more than two decades, but drew the ire of the state’s hardline Freedom Caucus just last year.
The bingo is Wyoming’s main fundraiser for those in the state living with HIV/AIDS. Regularly raising more than $40,000 a year, the bingo supports access to specialist care. The money raised covers the food, fuel and lodging costs Wyomingites can incur traveling to the handful of in-state providers in Casper and Cheyenne.
The state health department regularly passes federal funding to the bingo — in amounts that have always totaled less than $3,000 — for HIV prevention messaging and rapid tests made available at the event itself.
In a social media post from April, the Wyoming Freedom Caucus alleged these payments meant the state was endorsing a “perverted and scandalous event.”
The post went on to call the health department’s support for rapid tests “an insult to those who have suffered and lost their lives to this deadly and serious disease” and argued that publicly funded prevention efforts should go instead toward so-called “evidence-based strategies.”
Neither Guggenmos nor any other member of the Freedom Caucus sponsored legislation this session to support HIV/AIDS prevention, messaging, testing or treatment.
The legislation received a unanimous vote from the House Education Committee.
The bill advanced through the Freedom Caucus-dominated House, winning a 53-7 vote on its third and final reading on the chamber floor. In the Senate, HB134 was assigned to the chamber’s education committee where it earned a 3-2 vote.
Friday was the final day for HB134 to pass its committee-of-the-whole vote on the Senate floor. But the upper chamber, working through a long list of bills facing the same bottleneck, ran out of time to address it.
UW trustees will remain appointed, not elected
The University of Wyoming Board of Trustees consists of 12 voting members appointed by the governor and confirmed by the senate. The Wyoming Constitution dictates the board must consist of no less than seven such members.
House Bill 148 would have added seven elected positions to the board, to be chosen by seven distinct districts across the state. The bill’s sponsor, Cody Rep. Rachel Rodriguez-Williams (HD-50), said this was a “creative” way to add representation to the board without engaging in the more arduous process of amending the state constitution.
Rodriguez-Williams said her constituents are wary of the university and want more say in its governance.
“I would say there is a sense of disappointment in the management of [or] the way that our university is reflected statewide,” she told the Senate Education Committee last week. “I would say there’s a sense of reluctance to send students to our only land-grant university because of some of the issues that are portrayed.”
Rodriguez-Williams did not elaborate on the nature of these “issues,” but the Freedom Caucus she leads has been pushing to ban diversity-oriented programs at UW, while its allies have taken aim at course curriculum. Conservative lawmakers are also attempting to ban transgender athletes from competing for UW and prohibiting UW itself from competing against any other school more inclusive of transgender athletes.
But other lawmakers, including some of Rodriguez-Williams’ own right-wing allies, said the bill would be unconstitutional. Casper Sen. Charles Scott (SD-30) said the constitution doesn’t just allow for appointed trustees; it limits the board from going beyond them.
“This bill, as it stands before us, is not and cannot be made constitutional,” Scott said.
The committee withheld its endorsement, voting 3-2 to recommend the full Senate not pass the bill. Like the anti-drag proposal detailed above, the full Senate did not consider HB148 before adjourning on Friday, bringing the bill’s journey through the legislature to a close.
Maybe the people of Cody could send their kids to whatever college Rachel attended in California instead of UW?