Dear John, 

Last week, we introduced you to our issue bills through our email updates and Lunch & Lobby event. Thank you to all of those who have already taken action to inform your legislators! If you haven’t already, click here to Take Action by sending an email directly to your legislators to ask their support for the 2022 Equality Agenda. It only takes a few minutes to show your support for LGBTQ Virginians - we need everyone's help to keep our hard-fought protections in place.

Many bills are still waiting to be heard within their committees, but we have seen some good movement from the Senate. Both of Senator Ebbin’s marriage equality bills (SJ 5 & SB 557) were supported by the Privileges and Elections committee (10-Y, 5-N). They have both been rereferred to the Finance and Appropriations committee. Delegate Sickle’s House of Delegates companion bills (HJ 57 & HB 605) have been referred to the Committee on Privileges and Elections. 

Senator Peake’s SB 179 sought to roll back protections granted in the 2021 GA session for domestic workers. Thankfully these protections will continue as the General Laws and Technology committee voted to indefinitely pass on the bill (8-Y, 7-N). Similarly, Senator Peake’s SB 177, which would exempt religious organizations from the nondiscrimination provisions under the Virginia Human Rights Act and Virginia Fair Housing Law, was passed by indefinitely in the same committee (8-Y, 7-N). The companion bill HB 753 (Delegate Adams) is still awaiting vote within the General Laws subcommittee.

On Thursday, the Senate Public Education subcommittee voted on both SB 20 (Hackworth) and SB 766 (Kiggans). SB 20 seeks to remove the requirement that school boards must adopt policies based on the Virginia Department of Education model policies on the treatment of transgender students. These model policies use evidence-based practices to address many issues that transgender students face such as bullying and harassment, dress codes, and access to facilities. Similarly, SB 766 focuses on separation of sports teams by biological sex. After sending out a targeted action alert, you all sent over 2,700 emails to subcommittee members to encourage them to vote “no” on these bills and seven people testified in person! Thanks to your action, the committee voted against both of these bills.  Now these bills will move onto a full Education and Health committee vote. Please take action again to encourage the full committee to vote NO on SB 20 and SB 766. 

On Tuesday (02/01) at 5 p.m., the K-12 Education subcommittee will be examining SB 20’s companion bill HB 988 by Delegate Wyatt. We ask that you take action and encourage the members of the subcommittee to vote NO on HB 988. If you are interested in providing testimony during the subcommittee, you can scroll to the bottom of this webpage and decide how you’d like to participate in Tuesday’s subcommittee hearing on HB 988. If you would like to speak virtually, please be sure to sign up by 12:00 p.m. Tuesday. You are also welcome to come in-person to speak - you do not have to sign up ahead of time to do so.

To keep up with what bills are being heard next week and how you can help transform Virginia’s legal landscape, please follow EV’s Facebook page and check out our website with our newly updated bill tracker. We look forward to keeping you updated as this year’s session progresses.