Cyberbullying Bill 'Grace's Law 2.0' Stalls In MD Legislature

ANNAPOLIS, MD — As school safety bills worked their way through the state legislature, one designed to protect young people from violence beyond campus walls was never brought for a vote in the Maryland House of Delegates. Called "Grace's Law 2.0," the legislation would have expanded the scope of Maryland's law on cyberbullying.

"Messages travel faster than a bullet over the internet," said David McComas, whose daughter, Grace, inspired the legislation. He and his wife, Christine McComas, both testified before the House Judiciary Committee on March 27 in support of the bill named for their daughter, who committed suicide in 2012 after relentless bullying.

Although Grace's Law 2.0 passed in the Senate unanimously, it stalled in House Judiciary Committee after the March hearing. The Maryland General Assembly's 2018 session ended at midnight on Monday, April 9, without Grace's Law 2.0 going before the Maryland House of Delegates for a vote. For that to happen, the chair of the judiciary committee would have needed to make a motion for the bill to move to the House floor.

Officially known as Senate bill 726, Grace's Law 2.0 would have broadened the scope of cyberbullying in Maryland by prohibiting, among other things, the creation of fake social media profiles and material meant to "intimidate, torment or harass a minor"; prohibiting logging into a minor's social media account and distributing pictures; and establishing that telling a minor to "go kill yourself" online isn't protected speech.

The torment bullies unleash on children like Grace has been reported across the country. One in three kids has been bullied at school, according to a 2014 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Department of Education. Tens of thousands of kids stay home every day to avoid their bullies, a previous Patch story reported. Many are not equipped to cope, social worker Caroline Fenkel said, because the frontal lobes of adolescent and teen brains, which manage reasoning and emotions, aren't fully developed.

Cyberbullies, who target victims online, use social media to follow their targets virtually everywhere — until they break. Grace's Law took effect in 2013 and made it a misdemeanor to repeatedly and maliciously bully someone through use of a computer or cellphone.

Grace's Law 2.0 would have increased the penalty for threatening or defamatory statements about a youth or parent/guardian of a minor from a one-year maximum sentence and $500 fine to three years and $10,000. In addition, it added a clause that would have increased the jail term to 10 years if someone intended to "induce a minor to commit suicide."

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Joseph Vallario Jr. would have had to make a motion for the bill to proceed to the House of Delegates for a vote. A staffer in Vallario's office told Patch Monday afternoon that votes would be occurring up until midnight and there was no way to tell what the fate of the bill might be.

By midnight, the bill never went out of the committee, as Vallario made no motion.

Bill 'Appears To Be Dying...Because One Man Has The Power'

Six years ago, Christine and David McComas were told there was no law to prevent the attacks on their daughter. They approached the school system, police, courts and outside professionals for relief, and said they received little response. At the time their daughter was alive, there was no law to address the behavior.

"This must stop," Christine McComas said before the Maryland House Judiciary Committee last month. "Children need these protections."

She read some of the messages publicly broadcast toward her daughter online when she was 14 years old.

"'Next time my name rolls off your tongue, CHOKE ON IT AND DIE,'" Christine McComas read. "'I hope you somehow see this and cry yourself to sleep, then kill yourself...'"

Grace McComas committed suicide on April 8, 2012, at the age of 15. Sunday marked the six-year anniversary of Grace McComas's death.

"It's just after midnight Saturday...I am trying to come to terms with the fact that Grace's Law 2.0, and the child protections from cyberabuse needed NOW, has likely been scuttled because one man has the power to keep it from being voted on," Christine McComas posted on a Facebook tribute page for her daughter, Grace, over the weekend.

Questions Around Court Orders, Free Speech

"Facebook doesn't stop when you leave the school grounds. Neither does Twitter or any of these other things. These are growing problems, not isolated to Maryland, and we have to get better at this," said Senator Bobby Zirkin, D-Baltimore County, the lead sponsor of Grace's Law 2.0.

During the hearing last month before the House Judiciary Committee, members of the delegation questioned how the court system would handle application of the law and whether some parts of the bill went too far.

Delegate David Moon, D-Montgomery County, said that he could have been prosecuted if Grace's Law had been in effect when he was growing up.

"It's the child-to-child scenario I'm concerned about," Moon said. "I was always pranking my friends, and I used to sign my friends up for the Navy because those recruiters are merciless."

Under Grace's Law 2.0, it would have been forbidden to "subscribe a minor to a mailing list or to receive one or more electronic communications and cause intimidation or torment to the minor."

The court's involvement was of concern to one citizen who testified against the companion bill to Grace's Law.

Jo Saint-George of Montgomery County said she works for the NAACP but testified as an individual regarding Senate bill 725. Proposed as a companion bill to Grace's Law 2.0, it would allow school principals immunity in going directly to law enforcement with cyberbullying issues and would enable parents or guardians whose children had been cyberbullied to be granted injunctive, or court-ordered, relief.

Saint-George, who is an attorney, said she represented a student who was expelled for threatening a principal, and evidence of the alleged threats was never produced. She said that she was against the part in Senate bill 725 that would give more authority to school principals.

In addition, the "level of evidence needed to obtain injunction or prove a crime" was of concern, St. George said.

Delegate Vallario asked for clarification regarding which courts would handle injunctive relief cases and was told they would travel through circuit courts, with parents handling injunctions on behalf of their children in civil proceedings.

As of 8:45 p.m., the House Judiciary Committee provided a favorable report with an amendment to Senate bill 725, regarding civil relief and school response. The bill passed the House of Delegates as well.

Grace's Law 2.0, or Senate bill 726, went unaddressed by the House Judiciary Committee.

During the March hearing, testimony against Senate bill 726 from the ACLU centered around potential First Amendment infringement.

"...the bill makes it a crime to cause emotional distress," ACLU attorney David Rocah said. "There’s lots of things that people legitimately and lawfully say and should be allowed to say that cause emotional distress, which is why courts have specifically said you can’t do that; you can't make that a crime.”

Zirkin said the same concerns about free speech were brought up by the ACLU when the original Grace's Law was proposed.

"Five years ago we heard the same argument...and five years later that has not proven to be the case, so I say we err on the side of protecting these kids," Zirkin said. In response, Rocah said that lawmakers amended parts of the legislation before the passage of Grace's Law.

Zirkin said 576 people have been charged under original Grace's Law, resulting in three or four convictions, since 2013.

"This is not supposed to put people in jail. This is supposed to deter this behavior," Zirkin said. Pointing to the experience of the McComas family, he said: "...that behavior needs to be curbed. Without a law to stop it, there was nothing to do.”

For the McComas family, the proposal is a matter of life and death.

"Much like we now see drunk driving as the dangerous crime that it is, I hope that someday we will look back and see today as the moment when we boldly acted to protect children and make needed progress toward social change," Christine McComas testified. "Please pass SB 726, Grace's Law 2.0."

RELATED:

• Cyberbullying Law Gains Approval In Maryland Senate
• A Howard County Teen's Suicide Inspires Anti-Bullying Bill
• Bullied in Howard County? There's an App to Report That

Capital News Service contributed.

THE MENACE OF BULLIES: PATCH SERIES

Over the coming year, Patch will look at the roles society plays in bullying and a child's unthinkable decision to end their own life in hopes that we might offer solutions that save lives.

Do you have a story to tell? Email us at bullies@patch.com.

EARLIER IN THIS SERIES

• Bullied To Death: When Kids Kill With Words
• The Bully Menace: What Patch Readers Said
• Teen Tells Bullies In Video: 'Every Day, I Wear Your Words'

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