Week One: Kicking off 2025!

After a delay of a few days due to a water crisis in Richmond, the General Assembly 2025 session kicked off on Monday. While committee work was just getting started, the constitutional amendment resolutions were ready to go to the floor in the House, and all three passed!

QUOTE OF THE WEEK, Delegate Cia Price, speaking on the GOP’s heavy Bible quoting re: abortion, forgotten when it comes to forgiveness and second chances in voting after a felony: “Here’s the hypocrisy from HJ1 to HJ2. It is really hard to remain consistent with one’s religious tenets while trying to deny a second chance to someone who has already served their time…as a woman of faith, I’m just gobsmacked at the way that we in five to ten minutes forget the book that we just stood on and then just magically it’s not part of this conversation.”

The Constitutional Amendments:

• HJ1 would write the abortion provisions that were guaranteed by Roe v. Wade (prior to its overturning in the recent Dobbs decision) into Virginia’s Constitution. It passed the House this week on a party-line vote, and its Senate cognate HJ247 will be up for a floor vote next week.
  
• HJ2 affirms a fundamental right to vote except while serving time for a felony conviction, and is automatically reinstated upon completion of the sentence. After a failed GOP bid to restrict the automatic reinstatement to only those who have completed sentences for nonviolent felonies, and to only those who have also fully paid restitution, the resolution passed with slight bipartisan support. Senate cognate SJ248 will be voted on next week.
  
• HJ9 strips the language of the (defunct) Marshall-Newman amendment out of Virginia’s Constitution, and replaces it with the affirmation that marriage is one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness and stating that the Commonwealth shall recognize any lawful marriage between two adult persons. It passed the House with bipartisan support, and the Senate cognate, SJ249 will be voted on next week.

Some interesting battles/bills this session:

There are a large number of bills to address the ongoing issues with data centers, which bring tremendous revenue to the Commonwealth and localities, but also cause noise pollution, water pollution, and dramatically increase demand for energy, making it difficult for Virginia to meet her clean energy goals. Some related bills:

• Bills to address risks associated with new technologies as well as social media are prevalent this session.
  • HB2554 and SB1161 would require developers of generative AI include a disclosure in all AI-generated images and videos and take steps to prevent downstream uses without such disclosures.
  • HB2046, HB2094, and SB1214 require policies and procedure for the use and assessment by public bodies of “high-risk AI” (where significant decisions are made by AI and algorithms)
  • HB2401, SB998, and SB840 restricts social media influencers’ use of children in their online content, and where they are used, requires a share of the revenue be kept in trust for the child.
• After PETA called for an investigation last year into the unethical experimentation on pregnant baboons at Eastern Virginia Medical Center, legislators filed bills to prohibit the sale, transfer, or breeding of such primates (HB1768); and to require humane release to a sanctuary of such primates once no longer needed (SB907).
• Finally, an “I didn’t see that coming”: in a year when support for labor unions is nearly at a 60-year high, Republican legislators have decided to bring back the “right to work” constitutional amendment resolution that Virginia voters rejected by a large margin in 2016 (HJ450, HJ492, and SJ271).