Boston, Massachusetts, skyline. Photo by Venti Views on Unsplash.
House Bill 589, sponsored by Kenneth I. Gordon (D-21st Middlesex), would, if enacted, require that Massachusetts's science standards "include only peer-reviewed and age-appropriate subject matter," where "peer-reviewed subject matter" is defined as "conducted in compliance with accepted scientific methods." Introduced on February 27, 2025, the bill was referred to the Joint Committee on Education.
Gordon previously introduced identical bills: House Bill 491 in 2023, House Bill 607 in 2021, and House Bill 471 in 2019. During a 2019 hearing in the Joint Committee on Education, as NCSE previously reported, Gordon explained that his bill would keep climate change denial out of the science classroom, and a science journalist testifying in favor of the bill cited the threat of other types of "science denialism" as reasons to pass the bill. None of the previous bills passed.
