A bill aimed at establishing criminal penalties for the grooming of minors for sexual intent barely cleared the required threshold in the Wyoming House of Representatives Monday on a highly partisan vote, and caught the eye of Elon Musk.
Musk, arguably the most powerful man in social media with more than 234 million followers on his X platform, shared a tweet highlighting that all House Democrats had voted against it.
"Wow," Musk wrote.
What’s lost in the nuance of that viral tweet is that 13 Republicans also voted it down with Democrats saying the offenses outlined in the bill are already considered crimes by state statute and that lawmakers' time is better spent this session focusing on the budget.
The Bill
House Bill 9, “Grooming of Children — Offenses and Amendments,” barely passed the two-thirds majority vote needed during a budget session 43-19 to refer it to the House Judiciary Committee for discussion.
HB 9 seeks to define the specific behaviors that constitute grooming of minors for sexual offenses while tailoring the penalties based on ages of both the victim and perpetrator.
Grooming behaviors as written in the bill include electronic communication as well as the deliberate acts purposefully done to persuade a minor to engage in sexual conduct or exploit minors through manipulation, trust building, emotional connection through online or in-person activities, as well as through third parties or indirect methods.
It also defines sexual conduct whether actual or stimulated and the various acts thereof.
The bill also outlines penalties based on age with the strictest penalties reserved for perpetrators 18 or older who abuse minors under 12 who could face no less than 25 years in prison with fines up to $50,000.
The bill is in addition to House Bill 8, dubbed the “Stalking of Minors” bill, that would make stalking a minor a felony. It passed unanimously in the Wyoming House of Representatives Monday.
Going Viral
Musk, the CEO of Tesla and the former head of the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), on Tuesday shared via X a “Libs of TikTok” post with the roll call of the vote on the Wyoming bill.
Others took shots at Democrats in general with one commenter noting that more Republicans had actually voted against it.
Rep. Mike Yin, D-Jackson, did not comment on Musk weighing in on the vote.
Instead, he told Cowboy State Daily in a text that it was his understanding that the crimes described in the bill are already covered by existing laws.
“I don’t need to use time in a budget session on bills that are being used as political props instead of solving problems,” he said.
Rep. Ken Clouston, R-Gillette, also voted against the bill for similar reasons as Yin.
He said that he’d been advised that the HB 8 related to the stalking of minors, when combined with current law, would accomplish the same result as the proposed legislation, which is why he voted for HB8.
He, too, noted the limited time and constraints of the 21-day budget session but he did signal his support for legislation moving forward.
“As HB 9 continues to move forward, I do plan to support it as well,” Clouston said in a text. “Both bills are strong and well-intended; my concern at the time was simply the practical limitation of advancing multiple similar policy bills during a budget session.”
He said there were several bills that he hasn’t or will not vote on solely due to the “compressed nature of a budget session,” but which he would otherwise be inclined to support during a general session.
He, too, did not comment on Musk’s tweet.
Getting Ahead Of The Curve
Allen Thompson, executive director of the Wyoming Association of Sheriffs and Chiefs of Police that is in support of HB 9, said he sees the proposed legislation as a means to further bridge the gap between stalking behavior and physical violations of a child.
Thompson said language in the bill helps tighten the definition of what constitutes grooming behavior and sexual offenses while setting specific punishments based on the age of the perpetrator and the child and other measures.
In general, he said his group supports any legislation that protects children before they become physical victims of a crime.
In this regard, Thompson sees HB 9 as bridging the gap between stalking and the starting point of the grooming process where abusers move toward actually physically abusing the child.
“And when I say physical abuse that could be done to themselves through manipulation, it's still physical,” he said. “That stalking is a kind of intimidation that's prosecutable, usually as a misdemeanor, sometimes as a felony, but this adds that felony level prosecution when it goes past stalking but doesn't rise to sexual assault or sexual exploitation of children.”
The proposed legislation has been referred to the House Judiciary Committee with no meeting date yet scheduled.
Jen Kocher can be reached at jen@cowboystatedaily.com.
