Virginia Democrats Just Won 2026
The 2026 Virginia Legislative session just ended, and the wins are massive.
After Gov. Abigail Spanberger’s term began just a few short months ago in January, she quickly got to work with the Democratic majorities in the Virginia Legislature to deliver for the people of the Commonwealth.
There were over 1300 unique bills and resolutions passed, 137 amended by the governor, and 6 vetoed, and we’ve conducted an analysis of all of them.
Despite national Republican’s senseless charges against the Governor, her record speaks for itself.
Securing Virginians’ Civil Rights
Three key constitutional amendments are headed to voters this fall:
Reproductive freedom - establishes a fundamental right to reproductive freedom, restoring the Roe standard.
Marriage equality - repeals Virginia's old constitutional prohibition on same-sex marriage and requires equal treatment of marriages between any two adults regardless of sex, gender, or race.
Right to vote and felon re-enfranchisement - makes voting a fundamental right and automatically restores voting rights upon release from incarceration, eliminating the current requirement that a person convicted of a felony petition the Governor.
Protecting and Supporting Workers
$15 minimum wage - Raises the rate to $15.00 by Jan. 1, 2028, then indexes it to CPI annually starting 2029. Lifts pay for hundreds of thousands of Virginians and protects buying power against inflation going forward.
End of farm-worker minimum wage exclusion - Effective Jan. 1, 2027. Closes a Jim Crow-era carve-out that has kept farm workers, many immigrants and people of color, earning low wages.
$48/week unemployment benefits increase - Meaningfully raises a benefit that hadn’t kept pace with rents or grocery prices, helping laid-off workers stay housed and fed during job searches.
First-responder PTSD workers’ compensation expansion - Covers incidents without a physical injury for police and firefighters. Recognizes that psychological trauma from on-duty incidents is a real injury and gives first responders access to treatment without fighting for it.
State retirement savings program expansion - Brings retirement-savings access to workers at small businesses who currently have no employer-sponsored option.
Employee Child Care Assistance Program - Matches employer contributions to employees’ child care costs. Lowers a major barrier to working for parents, especially mothers.
Fighting Against Gun Violence
Firearm industry standards of conduct - Creates the ability to sue gun manufacturers for negligence or causing a public nuisance. Gives victims and the state legal options against irresponsible gun-industry practices that contribute to trafficking.
Ghost gun ban - Strengthens bans on plastic and unserialized firearms, with felony penalties for repeat offenses. Closes a loophole that has let people assemble untraceable weapons at home, making it harder for police to solve gun crimes.
Domestic violence firearm prohibition expansion - Adds dating partners and recent cohabitants and closes the boyfriend loophole, a major risk factor in domestic violence homicides, which are overwhelmingly committed with firearms.
Locked storage of guns in unattended cars - Handguns must be in a locked case. Reduces the supply of stolen guns, since vehicle break-ins are now one of the largest sources of firearms used in subsequent crimes.
Annual school safe gun storage parent messaging - For firearms and prescription drugs. Cuts youth suicides and accidental shootings, which research consistently shows are reduced by safe-storage awareness.
Higher-ed campus carry tightening - Narrows the firearm-ban exemption to weapons used as part of curriculum. Keeps Virginia’s college campuses safer for students, faculty, and staff.
Firearm transfer rules - Requires transferees to be over 21 and not living with the prohibited person. Prevents domestic-violence offenders from regaining quick access to firearms by handing them to a roommate or younger relative.
Supporting Tenant and Housing Rights
Local right to purchase subsidized housing - To preserve affordability. Let’s cities and counties save existing affordable units before they’re sold and converted to market-rate, addressing Virginia’s affordable-housing crisis at far lower cost than building new.
14-day waiting period before eviction - Tripled from the previous 5 days. Gives families a realistic window to catch up on rent, get paid, or arrange assistance, preventing avoidable evictions.
Local enforcement of habitability standards - Localities can sue landlords on tenants’ behalf for fire-hazard or habitability violations. Empowers cities and counties to hold landlords accountable when individual tenants can’t afford to litigate.
Central A/C as an essential service - Under the Landlord and Tenant Act. Recognizes that during Virginia’s increasingly hot summers, A/C is a health-and-safety issue, especially for elderly and vulnerable tenants.
Manufactured home park protections and resident rights - When parks are sold. Protects roughly 200,000 Virginians in manufactured housing from displacement when private equity buyers acquire parks and dramatically raise rents.
Eviction Reduction Program - Funds initiatives that have been shown to keep families housed at a fraction of the cost of post-eviction homelessness response.
Quicker approvals for affordable housing - Cuts months and tens of thousands of dollars off the development process for income-restricted housing, helping more get built.
Removal of cap on local homeownership grants for public employees - Helps teachers, deputies, and other public workers afford to live in the communities they serve.
Manufactured housing legalized by right - Increases access to housing across the state for residents choosing to buy, rent, or live in manufactured homes.
Legalizing affordable housing on church property - Allows churches to use vacant space to provide more housing options.
Reducing unnecessary parking restrictions - Reduces barriers to constructing housing based on required number of parking spaces.
Criminal Justice Reforms
10-year time limit on court fines and costs - Slashed from 60 (circuit) and 30 (district) years and bars collection during incarceration. Stops a debt trap that has kept Virginians in court debt.
Mandatory community-service fine credit program - Credits work performed while incarcerated. Lets indigent defendants resolve their court debt without facing endless penalties they cannot pay.
Shortened probation for good conduct - Criteria include education, employment, treatment, housing. Frees up probation officers to focus on people who need supervision and rewards individuals doing rehabilitation work.
Parole eligibility restoration - Corrects an injustice for hundreds of Virginians whose juries handed down longer sentences under a mistaken assumption that parole would soften them.
Earned sentence credits for detention before trial - Effective July 2028. Stops penalizing people who couldn’t afford bail by making sure their pretrial time counts toward sentence reduction.
Crime of suicide abolished - Removes an archaic statute whose existence creates legal complications for survivors and life-insurance claims.
Prisoner visitation standards - Minimum two-hour visits, posted dress codes, denial-review processes. Maintaining family contact is one of the strongest predictors of successful reentry and lower recidivism, which makes Virginia communities safer.
Inmate access to legal counsel standards - Protects basic constitutional rights and reduces wrongful convictions, which save the state both money and reputation.
Restorative discipline before suspension/expulsion - Reduces the school-to-prison pipeline and keeps students in classrooms learning.
Limits on juvenile cell confinement - Solitary confinement causes lasting psychological harm to developing brains. Reducing it improves rehabilitation outcomes and protects the long-term mental health of incarcerated youth.
Felony for masked impersonation of a police officer - Protects Virginians from being kidnapped or extorted by criminals posing as anonymous officers.
New sexual extortion offense - Expansion of the unlawful-image-creation crime. Gives prosecutors and victims tools to address the explosion of sextortion cases.
Access to Healthcare
Statutory right to contraception - Locks in access to birth control regardless of federal-court rulings or future state-level rollbacks.
End of tobacco-use health insurance surcharges - Removes a penalty, up to 50% higher premiums, that has priced many smokers out of coverage entirely.
Reinsurance program extension - Seeks Affordable Care Act waiver extension. Keeps individual-market insurance premiums down for the roughly 350,000 Virginians who buy their own coverage.
Tiered prescription drug cost-sharing caps - Stops the practice of catastrophic out-of-pocket costs for life-saving medications like insulin, asthma inhalers, and cancer drugs.
Physician review required for prior-authorization denials - Stops insurance companies from rejecting medically necessary care via algorithm or non-clinical staff.
In-network referral protections - Bars insurer restrictions on referrals to in-network labs/pathology. Lets your doctor send your bloodwork to the lab they trust.
Coverage for early refills of prescription eye drops - Ensures patients with glaucoma and other vision-threatening conditions have medication.
Maternal mental health screening coverage - No prior authorization for treatment drugs absent safety concerns. Addresses a leading cause of maternal mortality, postpartum depression and related conditions.
Severe Maternal Morbidity Surveillance and Review Program - Helps Virginia identify why mothers, especially Black mothers, are dying or suffering near-fatal complications at high rates, so the state can fix it.
Hospital administration of medical cannabis oil - Lets terminally ill and chronically ill patients continue their prescribed treatment when hospitalized.
Psilocybin rescheduling trigger - Positions Virginia to immediately offer breakthrough mental-health treatments for depression and PTSD as soon as they’re federally approved.
HIV PrEP insurance discrimination ban - Removes a penalty that has discouraged at-risk Virginians from taking a medication that prevents HIV transmission.
Sickle Cell Coordinated Access Network - Improves care for an estimated 5,000+ Virginians with a serious genetic disease that has long been under treated.
Energy, Data Centers, and Environment
Data center sound-impact site assessments - Protects neighborhoods, particularly in Northern Virginia, from the constant industrial humming that’s degraded quality of life and home values near new data centers.
Data center water-use disclosure - Suppliers must separately report water deliveries. Gives Virginians visibility into how much of their drinking water is being consumed by data center cooling.
Data center waste-heat reuse study - Directed to the Department of Energy. Could turn an environmental cost into a benefit by capturing data-center waste heat for nearby buildings, greenhouses, or district heating.
Emissions cap on data-center backup generators - Cuts diesel pollution near data centers, where residents have complained about air quality during testing and outage periods.
Infrastructure payments by large energy customers - Forces the largest power consumers to absorb more of the grid burden they create, rather than passing infrastructure costs onto residential ratepayers.
Carbon trading program re-establishment - Re-creates Virginia’s market-based carbon trading program. Restores funding for coastal flood protection and low-income energy efficiency.
Customer funded utility improvements overhaul - Forces utilities to seriously evaluate cheaper, faster alternatives to building expensive new transmission lines that ratepayers fund.
In-state Renewable Energy Certificates requirements - Keeps clean-energy investment dollars in Virginia, supporting in-state jobs and tax base rather than buying credits from out-of-state projects.
Virtual power plant authorization - Lets homeowners with batteries and smart appliances earn money by helping balance the grid.
Accelerated clean energy buyer framework - Helps large employers buy renewable energy more easily.
Rooftop solar authority for parking lots - Generates clean power on already-paved land while shading cars.
Underground transmission lines pilot expansion - Lets communities choose to spare scenic views, property values, and historic landscapes from massive overhead transmission lines, with a fair cost-sharing arrangement.
Smart Solar Permitting Platform - Cuts months off rooftop solar installation timelines, lowering the cost of going solar for homeowners.
Local tree canopy preservation expansion - Protects the urban tree cover that reduces summer cooling costs, captures stormwater, and improves air quality.
PFAS testing of sewage sludge - Stops forever chemicals from being spread on farmland and contaminating groundwater and food.
Voting Rights
Election certification duty - Prevents partisan local officials from refusing to certify legitimate election results.
Extended absentee ballot receipt deadline - From noon to 5:00 p.m. on the third day after Election Day. Gives mail-in voters a fairer window for postal delivery.
Automatic voter registration study - Lays the groundwork for a more accurate, complete voter roll with less administrative cost and burden on individual citizens.
Voter registration bribery ban - Closes a loophole and reinforces that voter registration is a not-for-profit.
Broadened emergency absentee ballot eligibility - Ensures that hospitalization, family emergencies, or last-minute crises don’t keep Virginians from voting.
Single-member districts in large localities - Required for localities of 400,000+ population. Improves representation by ensuring every neighborhood has its own elected voice on local government, rather than at-large systems.
Education
African American history graduation substitution - Allows AP African American Studies or African American History in place of World History I or World Geography.
Through-year growth assessment repeal - For grades 3-8 reading and math. Reduces over-testing, freeing up classroom time for actual instruction rather than test administration and prep.
School Performance Framework rebalancing - Gives credit to schools that take students from far behind to grade level, real teaching, rather than only rewarding schools whose intake is already high-performing.
Evidence-based mental health training for school staff - Equips teachers and counselors to recognize and respond to youth mental-health issues.
At-Risk Program funds for school nurses - Puts medical professionals in schools where many low-income students would otherwise have no health-care contact at all.
Mandatory SAT School Day participation - Removes cost, transportation, and scheduling barriers to college access for students whose families couldn’t otherwise afford testing.
Device-addiction instruction mandate - Gives students the tools to recognize and resist algorithmic manipulation.
AI and digital literacy in internet safety curriculum - Prepares Virginia students for an information environment increasingly polluted by AI fakes, scam targeting, and manipulated content.
High School CNA program - Creates a debt-free pathway into health-care employment for students who want to enter the workforce after graduation.
Interstate teacher and school psychologist compacts - Helps Virginia recruit qualified educators from other states without bureaucratic licensing delays.
3-year teaching license - Expands access to college-credit and career training in Virginia high schools by letting community-college instructors teach in them.
Library book censorship protection - Protects students’ freedom to read and stops politically motivated book bans from sweeping classics, LGBTQ+ titles, and works by authors of color off library shelves.
School panic alarms - Authorizes wearable panic alarms for school employees. Reduces emergency response times during school shootings or medical emergencies.
Taxation and Finance
End of Confederate organization tax exemptions - Stops Virginia taxpayers from subsidizing organizations whose central purpose is the celebration of a treasonous war fought to defend slavery.
Repeal of Confederate and Robert E. Lee license plates - Removes state endorsement from symbols that exclude and demean Black Virginians, who make up nearly a fifth of the state’s drivers.
Split-rate property tax authorization - For Charlottesville, Falls Church, Fredericksburg, and Newport News. Lets cities encourage development of vacant and underutilized lots while easing tax pressure on people who actually invest in their buildings.
Fantasy sports contest taxation - 10% revenue tax plus 2.6% regulatory fee. Captures public revenue from a previously untaxed industry and dedicates a share to problem-gambling treatment.
Sports betting credit card ban - Prevents bettors, from running up high-interest debt to fund gambling losses.
Miscellaneous
Trafficking-victim immunity for minors - Treats child sex-trafficking victims as victims rather than criminals, opening a path to services rather than juvenile detention.
Statewide centralized child-abuse hotline - Effective July 2027. Eliminates the patchwork of local hotlines that have caused critical reports to fall through jurisdictional cracks.
Noise-camera enforcement authorization - In Northern VA, Richmond-area, and Charlottesville-area planning districts. Addresses the modified-exhaust nuisance that has degraded quality of life in many Virginia neighborhoods.
Comprehensive kratom regulation - 21+ age restriction, labeling, and potency caps. Brings consumer safety standards to a largely unregulated supplement that has been linked to overdoses.
Plant-based meat labeling restrictions - Reduces consumer confusion at the grocery store while still allowing plant-based products to be sold.
Open-captioning movie theater requirement - Opens cinema attendance to roughly 1 million Virginians with hearing loss.
AI deepfake civil action - Gives Virginians legal recourse when their voice or image is hijacked for fake endorsements, non-consensual intimate imagery, or scams targeting their loved ones.
Manufacturing grants - Two large economic-development funds totaling roughly $158M aggregate. Anchors thousands of high-wage manufacturing jobs in Virginia and strengthens domestic supply chains for both the electric grid and national defense.
Vetoes
Mattress Stewardship Program - Would have established an industry-administered mattress recycling program.
Possession of controlled substance residue - Would have created a separate, lower-penalty offense for possessing trace residue rather than treating any quantity as a usable amount.
Vehicle lien enforcement threshold- Would have raised the value cap for selling a vehicle at auction to satisfy a lien from $12,500 to $17,000.
Plea agreement waivers- Would have prohibited plea deals from waiving Fourth Amendment rights, expungement rights, or record-sealing rights.
Electronic skill gaming devices- Would have legalized, regulated, and taxed (25%) skill games.
Fairfax County casino- Would have added Fairfax County to the list of casino-eligible localities.
What Didn’t Happen
Various taxes alleged by Republican media to have been implemented by the Governor were not supported or passed:
Tax on regional commercial parking
Regional sales and use tax for certain localities
Tax on firearms and ammunitions sales
State sales tax expansions:
Dog walking, dog grooming, gym memberships, counseling, vehicle repair, storage facility use, data storage, cosmetic services, dry cleaning, computer-related services, home repair, software application services, website hosting and design
Tax on large employers
Investment income tax on individuals, trusts, and estates
Tax on transportation network companies
Tax on retail deliveries
Conclusion
The Virginia Legislature and Governor Spanberger didn’t wait to take action. They made forward progress on the issues that matter most to Virginians, from access to healthcare to managing data center development.
These successes are a blueprint for states across the country to use their states as ‘laboratories of democracy’ to ensure that their communities thrive.
Awesome.
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