Nebraska Catholic Conference highlight timeline

1969 – Nebraska Catholic Conference established by the Archdiocese of Omaha and the Dioceses of Lincoln and Grand Island.

1971 – Promoted successful legislation to allow publicly-funded textbooks to be loaned to private-school students in grades K-7. Years of court battles challenging the law ensued.

1989 – Eventually prevailed in seeing textbook loan measures for private school students in grades K-12 to a Nebraska Supreme Court victory.

1991 – Established a program within the NCC to implement the U.S. Bishops’ Pastoral Plan for Pro-Life Activities.

1997 – Pushed the Legislature to overwhelmingly pass a state ban on partial-birth abortion, which was later overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court.

1998 – Helped create the Nebraska Federation of Catholic School Parents.

2000 – Called on Nebraska Catholics to vote for an initiative to amend the state constitution to recognize marriage only as the union of a man and woman, which 70% of voters approved that November. The amendment was successful, but the U.S. Supreme Court later invalidated it.

2001 – Helped establish the Nebraska Coalition for Ethical Research to champion biomedical research to protect human beings from fertilization to natural death.

2002 – Supported a measure that later became law to criminalize the homicide of an unborn child, recognizing that child as a separate victim in a homicide, outside the context of abortion.

2003 – Successfully opposed a legislative effort to reinstate the sales tax on groceries.

2004 – Supported a major reform of mental health and addiction services that emphasized community-based methods for those services.

2009 – Supported a law requiring abortionists to offer pregnant women a chance to view an ultrasound before performing an abortion.

2012 – Successfully promoted legislation to restore taxpayer-funded medical care for the unborn children of low-income illegal immigrants.

2015 – Backed the Legislature’s repeal of the death penalty, after decades of effort. Voters later reinstated the legality of capital punishment.

2017 – Backed a state law to provide stronger penalties for human trafficking.

2019 – Successfully opposed a bill to outlaw conversion therapy for people with same-sex attraction.