What will partisanship bring to the Nebraska Legislature in 2025?

According to the state constitution, Nebraska’s unicameral Legislature is officially nonpartisan.

In truth, that’s hardly the case. Republicans are in charge these days.

When lawmakers convene in January for the 2025 session, Republicans are expected to wield that power on issues such as abortion, the method Nebraska uses to allocate its electoral votes in presidential elections, and school vouchers.

Votes are still being counted after the Nov. 5 election, but Republicans appear headed toward keeping their supermajority of at least 33 seats in the 49-member Legislature after flipping two seats previously held by Democrats.

In other words, Democrats, who have successfully used filibusters to defeat what they deemed onerous legislation in the past, no longer have the votes to do so unless they can enlist the help of a moderate Republican or two.

For example, Democrats in 2023 failed to block the so-called Let Them Grow Act and the Preborn Child Protection Act, which banned almost all abortions after 12 weeks’ gestation and instituted restrictions on gender-affirming care for minors. The measures passed with 33 votes.

Nebraska voters on Nov. 5 approved a ballot measure enshrining in the state constitution a ban on abortions after 12 weeks. But there is nothing to stop Republicans from lowering the limit — or abolishing abortion rights altogether.

Republican lawmakers are expected to make another attempt to change the way Nebraska allocates its votes in the Electoral College in presidential elections.

Nebraska and Maine are the only states that split their electoral votes. In Nebraska, two of the five electoral votes for president are awarded based on the statewide vote; the other three are assigned to the winner of the election in each of the state’s congressional districts.

Democrats have called the 2nd District the “Blue Dot” since Joe Biden won it in 2020. Vice President Kamala Harris won the Blue Dot on Nov. 5 in her unsuccessful bid for the White House.

And even though voters passed a ballot measure to forbid the use of state funds for private school vouchers, Republicans are expected to keep pushing the idea.

A 2023 law called for a tax credit that taxpayers could use to pay for private school education. 

The Nebraska State Education Association, the state teachers union, gathered enough signatures in a petition drive to let voters weigh in on the law, but before that could happen, in the 2024 legislative session, Republican lawmakers passed a law that sets aside $10 million annually to pay for a voucher program for students attending private K-12 schools, essentially replacing the 2023 law with another approach to funneling taxpayer money to private schools.

Former state Sen. Steve Lathrop, a Democrat who served in the Legislature from 2006-14 and again from 2018-22, and was chairman of the powerful Judiciary Committee, said he’s concerned with the rise of partisanship in the Legislature.

“I do not expect the next session to be free of partisanship, but it may improve with the departure of the term-limited senators who relied on a level of partisanship not seen before 2017,” Lathrop said in an email to the Nebraska Independent. “Our Unicameral will certainly be better-served when the focus returns to policy and away from partisan politics.”