Senate Votes to Override Right to Work Fix

Senators have voted to override Governor Jim Justice’s veto of Senate Bill 330.

The bill was an attempt to clarify some language in the state’s Right to Work law which was approved by lawmakers in the 2016 session.

After its passage, the law was challenged in court and was recently ruled unconstitutional by a Kanawha County judge.

Justice noted in his veto message that lawmakers should wait for a final decision from the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals before changing the law– which is expected by late April.

“This does not interfere in anyway with the adjudication of the question of whether the legislation is somehow inconsistent with the United States Constitution or the West Virginia Constitution,” Senate Judicairy Chair Charles Trump said on the floor Thursday.  

“Our action in the bill that we passed, Senate Bill 330, was just to take out the part of the statute that the court found to be vague or ambiguous.”

It takes only a simple majority vote to override a gubernatorial veto. Senators voted 21 to 12 Thursday to do so.

It will also take a vote in the House of Delegates for the bill to become law without the governor’s signature.