The Virginia Common Meeting’s 2025 legislative session ended on Saturday with two LGBTQ rights payments awaiting Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s signature.
The primary invoice would amend the state’s definition of marriage to incorporate members of the LGBTQ neighborhood. SJ 249, also referred to as the Constitutional Modification; Marriage between Two Grownup Individuals, would change the state’s definition of marriage to “between two grownup individuals” reasonably than “a union between one man and one lady.”
This modification would repeal the definition of marriage in Virginia, updating it to mirror the U.S. Supreme Court docket’s 2015 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, which prolonged marriage rights to same-sex {couples} throughout the nation. This modification would additionally enshrine marriage rights for same-sex {couples} in Virginia, guaranteeing that solely one other constitutional modification or regulation {that a} majority of state lawmakers approve, can change it once more.
Similar-sex {couples} would have the identical authorized rights — tax breaks, inheritance rights, and Social Safety advantages — in Virginia, even when Obergefell have been to be overturned federally.
For the modification to take impact, it might must move the legislature once more in 2026, then go to a referendum.
The second LGBTQ rights invoice the Common Meeting authorised would amend the Virginia Human Rights Act.
Workers underneath the regulation, because it presently stands, do have protections in opposition to discrimination, harassment, and retaliation primarily based on particular protected classes that embrace race, shade, faith, nationwide origin, intercourse, being pregnant, childbirth or associated medical circumstances, age, marital standing, or incapacity to companies with 15 or extra staff, permitting complaints of violations to be reported to and investigated the state, copying the federal regulation.
Senate Invoice 1052, also referred to as the Virginia Human Rights Act; Definition of ‘Employer,’ would remove what some have referred to as a “small enterprise exception” in current regulation. The measure would lengthen human rights protections to staff of companies with as few as 5 employees, guaranteeing they’re coated underneath the Virginia Human Rights Act. It might additionally grant small enterprise staff the suitable to file complaints in opposition to their employers for potential human rights violations, holding companies legally accountable for any misconduct.
Youngkin has till March 24 to amend these payments.
