Senate committee adopts amendment to SB 15 46, names 988 as default referral and advances the bill to the floor

The Senate Committee on Early Childhood and Behavioral Health adopted a dash-2 amendment to Senate Bill 15 46 and voted to advance the bill to the Senate floor with a due-pass recommendation.

Chair Reynolds opened the resumed work session and said the dash-2 amendment is largely the dash-1 language with a few word changes and one drafting issue on clinical standards that the committee intends to fix in the House. After procedural motions and two votes to suspend rules so the committee could act without a one-hour posting requirement and without fiscal and revenue statements on hand, the committee adopted the dash-2 amendment dated 02/12/2026 and moved the bill to the floor.

The committee suspended rules twice to permit action before documents were posted. Senator Anderson moved both suspensions; each required a two-thirds vote and carried on a roll call in which the transcript records four ayes and one no. The committee clerk then called the roll to adopt the dash-2 amendment; the transcript records affirmative responses from the members listed and the amendment was adopted.

Dwight Holton, who addressed the panel at the committee’s request, described the text changes in the dash-2 amendment. He said the amendment makes three key edits: changing a list that defined the chatbot’s scope from disjunctive terms to conjunctive terms, explicitly naming the national 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline as the default referral and adding hyperlink language to facilitate connection, and clarifying that the youth line is an alternative referral while removing language suggesting youth lines provide counseling. Holton read portions of the draft, including: "Provide a user that expresses suicidal ideation or intent or self harm ideation or intent with a referral to and contact information and hyperlink added for new language, the national 988 suicide and crisis lifeline." He summarized the youth-line change by saying that if an operator identifies a user as 25 years of age, the draft permits referral to a youth line as an alternative but that all users must be referred and connected.

Chair Reynolds also placed on the record that Lines for Life and TechNet agreed on a specific House-side change to section 1, paragraph 3 (the subsection referenced in the transcript), and that the chambers would work together on a replacement provision to require providers to develop and maintain a protocol for additional intervention informed by best clinical practice. Reynolds said the parties agreed to "strike section 1 paragraph 3 little big b big b as written in the dash 2 amendment and replace it with language that will require providers to develop and maintain a protocol designed to provide additional intervention if the user continues to express suicidal or self harm ideation, informed by best clinical practice and expertise." (Quote as read into the record.)

On the final vote to report the bill to the floor with a due-pass recommendation, the transcript shows the motion carried on roll call; the committee chair closed the work session and adjourned.

The committee’s action advanced SB 15 46 but left at least one item—the precise clinical-standard language in the referenced subsection—for interchamber refinement. The transcript also records that fiscal and revenue impact statements for the dash-2 amendment were not yet posted to OLIS at the time of the votes.