LEGISLATIVE SESSION: A masterclass in bullying, bigotry, and bootlicking
While floods devastated West Virginia, lawmakers obsessed over bathrooms and voting restrictions. To quote Delegate Bill Flanigan (R – Ohio): "If it didn't deal with someone's genitalia, we didn't talk about it." See how extremists hijacked our statehouse.
Buoyed by a wave of MAGA support in the November elections, the West Virginia Legislature waged an all-out assault on civil liberties in the 2025 session. Lawmakers didn’t address the foster care crisis in any meaningful way. Nor did they provide drinking water to the tens of thousands of West Virginians who lack it. They budgeted zero dollars to mitigate the flooding the devastating flooding that occurred while they were in session.
Instead, legislators opted to attack trans people, end diversity and inclusion practices, curb voting rights, and more.
The session began with a flurry of unnecessary and even ridiculous bills, including one that would have renamed West Virginia’s highest peak, Spruce Knob, to “Trump Mountain.” Sponsors withdrew their names after widespread criticism of the bill.
Even members of the super-majority were critical of legislative priorities.
Speaking to the Wheeling Rotarians after the session had ended, Ohio County Republican Bill Flanigan said he would have rather seen bills aimed at addressing things like drug addiction, mental health, and treatment. “I hate to say this as a joke, but it seemed like if (a bill) didn’t deal with someone’s genitalia, we didn’t talk about it for at least a month,” Flanigan told the group, according to the Wheeling Intelligencer newspaper.
He wasn’t alone in his frustrations. During a blunt floor speech, Sen. Ryan Weld, R-Brooke, bemoaned the Legislature’s focus on the LGBTQ+ community.
“This is dumb,” said Weld, who represents several cities with anti-discrimination protections that would have been nullified by the bill in question. “In West Virginia we like to say, ‘All are welcome.’ I’m not sure this helps with that message.”
ACLU-WV Advocacy Director Rusty Williams, who was present for nearly every minute of the 60-day session, was even more direct.
“Legislators put on a master class in bullying, bigotry, and bootlicking this session,” he said. “It was one of the most disheartening displays I have ever seen, and I have been an advocate at the Capitol for more than a decade. “To know how many people are suffering in this state who could be helped with legislative action but who were ignored so that legislators could punch down on already marginalized people was honestly disgusting,” he continued.
In addition to passing a bevy of harmful legislation, lawmakers also stuck to their recent trend of limiting public input. Recent sessions saw lawmakers ban recording devices from chambers and suspend constitutional rules to pass bills without debate. This session, the House did away with public hearings entirely, opting instead to only allow testimony from people invited by committee leadership.
ACLU-WV tracked 342 bills during the session on an online legislative tracker. Of those, the affiliate supported 67 bills and opposed 222.
Only four of the bills supported by the affiliate passed the Legislature. Twenty-three of the bills opposed by ACLU-WV for being harmful and/or unconstitutional passed. They include:
• An anti-diversity bill that seeks to silence discussions about racism in schools and universities, and tries to re-segregate many aspects of our society in everything but name. The bill also gives legal cover to teachers who deadname or misgender trans students. The Senate likely broke its own rules when trying to rush this bill through at the last minute.
• “Lauren’s Law” which will add some 21 new penalties for drug possession, worsen jail overcrowding, triple minimum sentences for drugs that do NOT include fentanyl, and more. The drug war has failed to make our communities safer. All it has done is drain resources and tear communities apart, with communities of color being the hardest hit.
• A bill forcing teachers to “out” trans students to their parents if they ask the teacher to start using different pronouns or a different name for them. Lawmakers were particularly preoccupied with trying to force LGBTQ+ West Virginians back into the closet this session. This discriminatory bill is also likely to see a court challenge.
• Several anti-voting bills restricting the types of voter ID that will be accepted, making it easier for officials to remove people from voter rolls, banning ranked choice voting (which already isn’t used in state-run elections in West Virginia) and barring non-citizens from voting (which is already prohibited by state law).
• A bill removing the exemptions to the state’s gender-affirming medical care ban. When lawmakers barred gender-affirming care for trans youth a couple of years ago, they at least had the decency to allow kids experiencing severe gender dysphoria or suicidal ideation to still receive the care. This lifesaving care will now be completely banned in West Virginia. The ACLU is currently litigating this issue at the Supreme Court in United States v. Skrmetti.
“None of these bills improves the lives of West Virginians in any way,” ACLU-WV Executive Director Eli Baumwell said. “Lawmakers had a mountain of serious problems before them and instead of addressing any of them, they attacked already marginalized people, made it harder to vote, and exacerbated the dire problem of prison and jail overcrowding.”
It wasn’t all bad news. A number of harmful bills failed to pass, including:
• A statewide “camping ban” criminalizing sleeping outside when a person has nowhere else to go.
• A rewrite of the state’s Freedom of Information Act that would have undermined the public’s ability to access government records.
• A bill that would have overturned the state’s 20 municipal ordinances barring discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and/or gender identity.
• An anti-immigrant bill disguised as a human-trafficking trafficking bill that would have criminalized churches for providing rides to undocumented people.
• The resurrection of the death penalty.
• A bill kicking more than 165,000 people off of Medicaid if the federal government changes its funding formula by even one penny.
– BILLY WOLFE