Seventeen Bills Vetoed Last Year are on the Governor's Desk Again
Of the more than 900 bills passed by the Virginia General Assembly this year, 17 are very similar, or identical, to bills previously vetoed by Gov. Youngkin in 2024. The Governor has until Monday night to act on legislation from this session. Each bill can either be signed, vetoed, or sent back to the General Assembly with recommended changes.
The similarity of bills is based on the bill's summary text as submitted by legislators each session. VPAP has not reviewed the full text of these bills, so there may be differences between the versions vetoed last year and the versions passed this year.
Business/Commerce
| SB1132 | Prohibits employers from seeking wage history from job applicants |
Courts
| HB1665 | Requires court clerks to provide an itemized statement of court ordered payments to defendants |
Education
| HB2774 | Requires school board to notify parents within 24 hours of a student overdose |
Health Care
| HB1649, SB740 | Requires unconscious bias training for medical licenses |
| HB1724 | Establishes the Prescription Drug Affordability Board |
Public Safety
| HB2631, SB891 | Establishes a five day waiting period for firearm purchases |
| SB1409 | Restricts the use of solitary confinement in state prisons |
| SB880 | Prohibits the carrying of certain rifles and shotguns in public places |
Real Estate
| HB1638, SB1128 | Creates rules for criminal history inquiries on affordable housing applications |
| HB1718 | Allows localities to take action against landlords for some lease and law violations |
| HB1973 | Gives localities right of first refusal in the sale of affordable housing |
| HB2054 | Allows localities to negotiate for affordable housing units in new assisted living facilities |
| SB1313 | Allows localities to change zoning laws to encourage affordable housing development |
Taxation
| HB1764 | Apportions county plastic bag tax revenues to towns, based on their share of taxes |
Source: Virginia's Legislative Information System. Research and bill descriptions from VPAP.
Methodology: VPAP used the list of bills that passed both chambers in the 2025 session (and are still waiting on action by the Governor) and then found "similar" bills based on the 201 bills that were vetoed by the Governor in 2024. Two bills were considered the same, or "semantically similar", if the summary text, as drafted by the Division of Legislative Services, was identical or nearly identical. This semantic similarity is calculated based on variations of the "TF-IDF" and "cosine similarity" algorithms.