Bill Watch List / 2026 Session

Updated: 10/22/2025 12:41 PM

SUPPORT:

• SB537 – SIGNED into law – Ensures that West Virginia’s Mothers and Babies Pregnancy Support Program provides expanded funding and resources for pregnancy help centers—while explicitly barring any funding for abortion-related organizations.

• HB2164 – SIGNED into law – Authorizes local school boards, public charter schools, and private or religious schools to employ school security officers, and to establish certification, training, and standards for these officers, including rules for firearm carriage, detention powers, insurance, and cooperation with law enforcement
• SB154 – SIGNED into law – Prohibits public schools from providing instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity in any grade, except when responding to student questions, referencing historical or public figures, addressing bullying or discipline issues, or within college-level courses. Requires school staff to report to an administrator—and the administrator must notify parents or guardians—if a student requests to be identified or accommodated as a gender differing from their biological sex. School employees may not withhold, falsify, or mislead parents about a student’s gender identity or intent to transition.
• SB280 – SIGNED into law – Requires the official US motto, “In God We Trust,” to be displayed in all public elementary, secondary and schools of higher education.
• SB914 – SIGNED into law – Relating to certain nonpublic schools; replacing the minimum 180-day instructional term and average of five hours of instruction per day requirements with a minimum instructional term requirement of 800 hours per school year; adding requirement that upon request, the school composite results be made available to the parents or legal guardians of a prospective enrollee in the school; removing the requirement that upon request of the West Virginia Department of Education, the school’s composite results be furnished to the State Superintendent of Schools; and removing ramifications of a school’s composite test results falling below the 40th percentile.

• SB299 – SIGNED into law – Prohibits the administration of gender-altering medications and gender reassignment surgeries to minors, including eliminating the “mental health exception.”
• SB456 – SIGNED into law – Clearly defines male and female in terms consistent with a biblical world view and as “legally equal,” but “not biologically the same.” Requires public schools to designate multiple use restrooms for either the “exclusive use of females” or “the exclusive use of males.” Requres the separate sleeping quarters, multiple occupancy restrooms, and shower facilities for males and females in domestic violence shelters and correctional institutions.

• HB2129 – SIGNED into law – Parents’ Bill of Rights. It ensures parents have rights to: Direct their child’s education and medical care; Moral or religious training; Enrollment choices (public, private, homeschool, etc.); Access and review of school records for their child.

• SB198 – SIGNED into law – Makes it a crime to create, produce, distribute, or possess AI-generated child pornography, even when no real minor is shown.

• SB460 – Passed Senate – Rejected in the House – Allows vaccine exemptions for medical, religious, and philosophical reasons, and prevents schools from discriminating against those who receive them.

• SB474 – SIGNED into law – Eliminates diversity, equity, and inclusion training, activities, offices, and officers from the executive branch, primary and secondary schools, and institutions of higher education in West Virginia; and protects employees and teachers from being required to use pronouns that differ from a person’s biological sex.