Full text from my Proposition 4 (Constitutional Amendment) speech on May 13, 2026:

(Watch here, starting at around 38:00)

We have done a lot of memorable things in the six years I have held this seat that we can be tremendously proud of and awed by, and there are certainly moments I will carry with me forever when I leave at the end of this term. One of those moments comes now, when after four years we vote on whether to let all Vermonters decide whether we choose to let equal rights stand as one of our foundational precepts. 

The notion that our state that doesn’t already affirm equal protection and treatment under the law reveals a profound and common disconnect between which of our protections are foundational, which are assumed, and which may merely be temporal.

Yes, we have statutes that provide certain protections. But during my time here in this State House, I have watched lawmakers repeatedly fail to ask who is being left out when we draft new laws. Too often, we do not ask who benefits, whether a bill creates more equitable and just systems for all Vermonters, or whether it may impose disparate harms on underrepresented communities.

And yet we say the harmony of liberty exists because it is written into statute, as though that, alone, is sufficient. But we know better; we know laws can be political at their roots, contain gaps that cause harm, create unfair advantages, or be implemented in ways that betray the spirit in which they were written.

We know this, because [as legislators] we make the sausage. And as Vermonters ourselves, we know the process as well as how the results play out in our communities. Many Vermonters learn early that rights, in practice, are often unevenly distributed or applied according to whether those around them deem their humanity worthy of recognition and respect. That is not how liberty ought to function.

We cannot allow the aspirational promise of equality to overshadow our pains to make it indelible. This constitutional amendment makes it a foundational obligation. It establishes at its very base what the state is forbidden to do, and what it is bound to uphold. Rights that depend upon the goodwill of a temporary majority are not rights at all; they are privileges, and privileges can be revoked unexpectedly and wholesale. Equality affirmed in a state constitution is more secure, more durable, and more evenly protected. It rejects the diminishment of anyone’s rights.  And so the true issue before us is whether Vermonters are prepared to transform the ideal of equality into a legal, moral, and civic obligation.

The purpose of constitutionally equal protection and treatment is to officially restrain the impulse to turn difference into parenthetical hierarchy. It rejects evasion of the question of who is being left out. It says, clearly, that a person’s humanity cannot be reduced by prejudice, custom, or political convenience. It codifies equality as the norm. This is not, and should not be, controversial.

Prop 4 is an expression of faith in a future Vermont that refuses to place conditions on human dignity. And if we vote to affirm that principle plainly, formally, and in its very constitution, it will earn us the solid and even ground on which Vermonters can stand together, shoulder to shoulder. I ask this body to join me in voting in the affirmative.