A Senate version of the bill has yet to receive a committee hearing and has no companion bill in the House. That means, said one proponent of the idea, that the bill has little chance of passage in this frantic session, heavily devoted to cutting and balancing the state budget.

As it should be in this time of economic turmoil.

Last year, Hays filed a similar bill in the House and Sen. Ronda Storms, R-Valrico, filed a Senate bill that Hays said had the same goal but different wording. Storms’ bill prohibited discipline or lawsuits against science teachers who taught alternatives to evolution as theories on the origins of species.

Why any elected official thinks they should be legislating protections for people willingly defying the Constitution is beyond me.