The 2025 regular session of the West Virginia Legislature concluded at midnight on April 12. As the dust settled, it became clear that Governor Patrick Morrisey was able to get the majority of his agenda enacted into law, including the establishment of microgrid districts for data centers, reorganizing state government, and streamlining the permitting process. In other news, the House of Delegates successfully implemented a new two-day/stage process for considering and then acting upon bills in House committees. Now that the Legislature has left Charleston, the Governor will have until midnight on April 30 to act on the bills presented to him.
For this legislative session, the Spilman Thomas & Battle Government Relations Practice Group followed the progress of significant legislation in certain areas such as environment, oil & gas, tax reform, healthcare, insurance, consumer finance, and civil justice reform.
THE 2025 LEGISLATIVE SESSION BY THE NUMBERS
A combined total of 2,460 bills were introduced this session, but only 249 were enacted, a completion rate of 10.1 percent, slightly down from last year’s record low of 10.8 percent, and a significant drop from the 10-year average of 14.3 percent. The new two-day/stage process for considering bills in House committees did not seem to affect the number of bills that the House sent to the Senate this year, as 15.8 percent of House bills crossed over to the Senate, the exact same percentage as last year. The true impact of that longer process, however, seems to have been borne by Senate bills in that only 47 percent of those bills that crossed over to the House completed the legislative process, compared to the previous years’ average of over 63 percent. All in all, only 97 Senate bills were enacted, an all-time low in modern times.
BILLS THAT PASSED
Under the West Virginia Constitution, the Governor may approve a bill, veto it, or let it become law without his signature. Since the Legislature adjourned sine die, he has until midnight on April 30 to take action on the 249 bills that have been enacted.
Here is a brief description of those bills of interest that were enacted:
The Governor’s microgrid data center bill, H.B. 2014, creates a Certified Microgrid Program to be administered by the Division of Economic Development and defines “High Impact Data Centers" as a facility or group of facilities that is used to house and operate equipment that receives, stores, aggregates, manages, processes, transforms, retrieves, researches, or transmits data, has a critical IT load of 90 megawatts or higher, and is placed into service on or after July 1, 2025. The two major benefits provided by this bill are that it permits data centers to operate their own independent energy grids and exempts them from local zoning rules or ordinances or other siting requirements. The resulting increase in property tax revenue stemming from the operation of these centers would be split between certain priorities such as a further reduction of the state personal income tax, the county in which the data center is located, and other initiatives such as infrastructure development and business recruitment.
H.B. 2576 has the potential for significantly influencing collegiate athletics in West Virginia because it provides a standard definition for Name, Image and Likeness (NIL), the assets of value created by student athletes, and authorizes higher education institutions to enter into agreements relating to a student-athlete’s NIL. More critically, among other things, the new law prohibits any institution, athletic association, athletic conference, or other organization with authority over intercollegiate athletics to take adverse action against a student athlete; declare a student-athlete ineligible from intercollegiate athletic competition; or reduce, cancel, revoke, or not renew an athletic scholarship as a result of the student entering into such an agreement. There are, of course, limitations to the use of NIL, most of which involve activities such as promotion of alcohol, gambling, adult entertainment, and cannabis, to name just a few. A companion bill, H.B. 2595, was also enacted and it authorizes higher education institutions to enter into agreements with private corporations to conduct operational, economic, fiscal, and educational development activities and services related to intercollegiate athletics programs.
H.B. 2354 has already been signed by the Governor and designates red dyes No. 3 and No. 40, yellow dyes No. 5 and No. 6, blue dyes No. 1 and No. 2 as “poisonous or injurious to the health.” While the ban on those foods does not take effect until January 1, 2028, such additives will not be permitted as ingredients in any meal served in the school system after August 1, 2025.
Governor Morrisey pursued three bills that reorganized parts of the Executive Branch and started the transition of the state public employee system from civil service protection to a merit system: H.B. 2008, H.B. 2009, and H.B. 2013. These bills reshape state government by merging governmental units within certain executive branch departments. More importantly, the bills started the conversion of the public employee civil service system into a merit system. Notably, under these bills, current employees of certain agencies who are members of the classified civil service system remain in that system and maintain recourse to the state grievance procedures, so long as they remain in their current position. New hires as of July 1, 2025 and current employees who change their position after that date are transferred to the classified-exempt service system and exempted from the state grievance procedure.
The West Virginia Legislature again approved a budget before the end of the session by enacting H.B. 2026, which authorizes the expenditure of $5.323 billion in general (tax-generated) revenue. This amount is just $5 million less than requested by Governor Morrisey in his proposed budget. Surplus revenue, if any, is allocated as follows: $25 million to the state road fund; $75 million for high impact economic development projects; and, $10 million to water development projects. The aggregate spending authority, inclusive of federal funds and special revenue, actually tops $19 billion.
The West Virginia Constitution permits the Governor to exercise the line-item veto whereby he may delete or reduce specific line item expenditures, as well as terms, conditions, or restrictions for the same for the executive branch (but not for the legislative or judicial branches).
H.B. 2002 is designed to improve the state’s competitiveness by creating the One-Stop-Shop Permit Program, which would feature a Permitting Dashboard to track applications for qualifying state permits. The bill would also create a refund requirement for late action by the regulatory agency in responding to permit requests.
S.B. 458 has been approved by Governor Morrisey and is focused on making the state more competitive by easing licensure qualifications for people who move to this state. Specifically, it establishes universal professional and occupational licensing reciprocity in West Virginia and standards used by boards of examination and registration for accepting the professional and occupational licenses issued by other states.
H.B. 2711 is likely to bring relief to law students trying to understand the concept of future interests in property law and attorneys engaged in the practice of trusts and estates. Simply put, for every trust created after July 1, 2025, and unless otherwise stated therein, the common law rule against perpetuities has been essentially abolished. The purpose of the rule against perpetuities was to limit a person’s power to control the disposition of their estate after their death and did so by invalidating future interests that vest too far in the future. While easily stated, its application was overly technical and prone to drafting errors. If approved by the Governor, West Virginia will join a handful of states that have already taken this step to modernize their trusts and estates law.
The purpose of H.B. 3517 is to establish a system to remediate fiscal emergencies of local governments and to modernize the process for dissolution of municipalities. In short, the bill provides guidelines for identifying potential for declarations of a fiscal watch or fiscal emergency by political subdivisions, such as counties; provides the State Auditor with rule-making authority to implement a financial recovery plan; and provides for the establishment of a financial planning and supervision committee for that entity.
H.B. 2402 provides access to the health records of a minor child to parents, guardians, and foster parents unless otherwise ordered by a court if the minor child has graduated high school or equivalent, is emancipated, or is married.
S.B. 565, if approved by Governor Morrisey, expands the scope of practice for optometrists to offer certain ophthalmic laser procedures, provided that they have met certain minimum educational and training requirements.
BILLS THAT FAILED TO COMPLETE LEGISLATIVE ACTION
The following bills of interest failed to complete legislative action.
As predicted, proponents of religious exemptions to the state’s childhood immunization law tried to amend the previously rejected S.B. 460 into another bill. As previously reported, S.B. 460 had been rejected by the House of Delegates by a vote of 56-42. However, the Senate Health Committee amended religious exemptions language into H.B. 2776, a bill requiring Health Departments to report cases of a particular tick-borne illness to the Centers for Disease Control. This controversial move seemingly violated the constitutional requirement that a bill embrace only one object, unlike in Congress, where different subject matters may be added as riders to unrelated legislation. That legal issue did not have to be resolved because the sponsor withdrew the amendment before it could be challenged, thus ending the fight over childhood immunizations for now.
The purpose of S.B. 2007 was to repeal the certificate of need program, which regulated the construction or expansion of healthcare facilities. As previously reported, this bill was rejected by the House Health Committee in late February. However, supporters of the legislation attempted to revive the bill by having it discharged from that committee and considered by the entire House of Delegates sitting as a committee of the whole. That attempted circumvention of the committee process was soundly defeated. Even still, it is clear that this attempt to repeal CON will be revived again next year.
S.B. 585 mandated the use of padded helmets for student athletes participating in organized football practices and was named after Cohen Craddock, a student-athlete who died as a result of a head injury during football practice. This bill passed the Senate, but was amended and advanced by the House Health Committee so late in the session that time ran out before it could be considered by the House Finance Committee.
The purpose of H.B. 2987 was to create the Consumer Data Protection Act which was intended, among other things, to provide certain rights to consumers such as obtaining confirmation from an entity possessing identifying private information whether or not a controller is processing the same; correcting inaccuracies in the consumer's personal data; and deleting such data upon request from the consumer. No private cause of action was created by the Act, as the Attorney General was granted exclusive enforcement jurisdiction.
H.B. 3518 related to the Medicaid expansion population. The bill would have eliminated the entire Medicaid waiver expansion program if the federal medical assistance for the expansion program were reduced. This trigger law would have resulted in a combined loss of over $1 billion in Medicaid spending.
