West Virginia is one of 20 U.S. states not to report a case of measles in 2025, so far. However, all five of its border states have reported cases, with Kentucky announcing its second case of the year on Friday.
All five of West Virginia’s border states have reported cases of measles in 2025, with Kentucky announcing its second case of the year on Friday.
West Virginia saw its first case of measles since 2009 last year, but the case was contained to one undervaccinated individual who traveled internationally.
While the Department of Health advised West Virginia residents of possible measles exposure at a Washington D.C. airport in March, West Virginia has yet to report a case in 2025.
In February, Kentucky saw its first case of measles of the year, but that case was contained.
Kentucky’s Cabinet for Health and Family Services announced on Friday that a child who was traveling through the state and not a U.S. resident was treated for measles in March. Since the child was treated in the state, the case was counted as a Kentucky incident.
Health experts also said in Friday’s release that there are no other cases or risk of exposure to Kentuckians associated with the March case.
Measures to loosen vaccination requirements passed the West Virginia Senate but narrowly failed in the House of Delegates during the 2025 legislative session.
School entry vaccination is a contentious topic in West Virginia, but health officials told lawmakers who support laws allowing for exemptions that the state’s strict school entry vaccine policy is responsible for West Virginia’s lack of measles outbreaks.
West Virginia allows only medical exemptions to school-entry vaccination.
Upon being sworn in in January, Gov. Patrick Morrisey signed an executive order to allow for religious exemptions to school entry vaccination in West Virginia.
Though legislation to solidify exemptions in state code failed to pass, West Virginia is abiding by Morrisey’s executive order by allowing parents or guardians to request a religious or moral exemption for compulsory school vaccines.
A bill to fund a Tobacco Education Fund in the nation’s most nicotine addicted state failed in the final hours of the 2025 legislative session.
Lawmakers came up one bill short on funding tobacco cessation and prevention programs in West Virginia in the final hours of the 2025 session.
In 2023, then-Attorney General Patrick Morrisey settled with Juul Labs, an e-cigarette company, for $7.9 million in a lawsuit alleging the company was marketing products to underage users in West Virginia.
The lawsuit also accused Juul of violating the state’s Consumer Credit and Protection Act by engaging in unfair or deceptive practices in the design, manufacturing, marketing and sale of e-cigarettes in West Virginia.
The Juul settlement money’s stated purpose was to fund youth prevention efforts. With Morrisey now governor, the legislature has yet to appropriate any of those settlement funds toward tobacco cessation or prevention.
That nearly changed in the final week of the 2025 legislative session.
House Bill 3521 would have appropriated $1,192,452 from the Attorney General’s Consumer Protection Recovery Fund to a program in the Department of Health called the Tobacco Education Program.
After originating in the House Finance Committee on April 9, the bill passed the House of Delegates but was referred to the Senate Finance Committee on Saturday, April 12, and remained there until the legislature adjourned for the year.
The ACS CAN Government Relations Director, Doug Hogan, released a statement on April 11, following the bill’s passage through the House, urging the Senate to pass the legislation.
“As Big Tobacco works tirelessly to addict future generations through e-cigarettes and other tobacco products, ACS CAN applauds this action and urges the Senate to pass this legislation before the deadline,” Hogan said. “The need for funding for tobacco prevention programs has never been more critical.”
Tobacco use remains the leading cause of preventable death and disease in West Virginia, including 37.8% of cancer deaths, according to the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network.
In addition, 28.5% of West Virginia high school students use tobacco products.
Lawmakers in the House said the bill was a product of them “finding the money” while working on the state’s budget.
The Senate referred the bill to the finance committee without discussion on April 12.
Both chambers of the West Virginia Legislature voted to pass a bill banning diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. But a technical error sent the state Senate into chaos Saturday night.
With minutes left in this year’s legislative session, the West Virginia Senate fell into chaos over a late-night technical error.
Senate Bill 474 — ending diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives statewide — has been one of the most hotly contested pieces of legislation set forth this year, shepherded by Gov. Patrick Morrisey. But procedural confusion threw the state’s upper legislative chamber into a scramble Saturday night, casting doubt over the bill’s fate.
The Senate ultimately passed the bill, but ranking members say they are unsure whether the steps taken to do so were entirely legal. Some even say the debate over Senate Bill 474 could spill into the courtroom.
A procedural back-and-forth
After receiving approval from its chamber of origin last month, Senate Bill 474 passed the West Virginia House of Delegates Saturday night 87 to 12, following hours of debate and numerous amendments from the body’s Democrats.
“We’re handcuffing our educators so they’re not wanting to teach these sorts of things. That’s what we’re doing,” said Del. Hollis Lewis, D-Kanawha. “But when we start attacking education, that’s where we’re failing.”
Once the bill returned to the Senate for final approval, things got messy.
Sen. Amy Grady, R-Mason, motioned for a vote in the bill’s favor, but withdrew it shortly thereafter. Senators said the House needed to iron out technical issues before giving it an okay.
Later, Sen. Eric Tarr, R-Putnam, called to suspend Joint Rule 3, which pertains to disagreements over amendments between the two chambers. He urged senators to concur with the House amendments that were sent back to the House “due to technical flaws.”
“I request unanimous consent to suspend Joint Rule 3 and concur and pass on Senate Bill 474,” Tarr said.
Meanwhile, Sen. Joey Garcia, D-Marion, had proposed 15 amendments on the bill that were yet to be reviewed. Tarr said calling a suspension of Joint Rule 3 meant the Senate did not need to take up those amendments.
“It makes it so that, if it is amended, we don’t have to consider any of those amendments,” Tarr told West Virginia Public Broadcasting after the floor discussion. He said he had planned on debating the amendments, but thought summoning Joint Rule 3 would more effectively avoid a lengthy amendment review.
“If we hadn’t went ahead and done that all in one motion, we would have had to consider all the amendments,” Tarr said.
Efforts to intervene fall short
Bills that do not pass both chambers by midnight on the final day of session are considered dead. Tarr said cutting off debate over the bill was an important next step toward ensuring the bill’s passage.
The Senate currently includes just two Democrats: Garcia and Sen. Mike Woelfel, D-Cabell. During the process, both stood up to speak, but their microphones appeared to be disabled.
“They did not allow any debate,” Garcia told WVPB. “They didn’t even allow us to take the amendments that we had filed in the system and have a hearing on each of them — which I believe, under the rules, is something that had to happen.”
“I think there is, technically, a legal deficiency with how that bill was passed,” he continued. “The rules were not followed.”
Both Democrats repeatedly requested points of order from Senate President Randy Smith, R-Preston. That process seeks to ensure legislative procedure is being followed correctly. But Smith shot down some of their appeals, and did not recognize the rest.
The Senate then voted to suspend its rules and passed the bill 32 to 2. After a protracted legislative battle, it now heads to the governor’s desk, where it can be signed into law.
Sen. Eric Tarr, R-Putnam, attends a Senate Education Committee meeting March 18.
Photo Credit: Will Price/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Sen. Mike Woelfel, D-Cabell, speaks on the Senate floor March 10.
Photo Credit: Will Price/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
‘What lies ahead’: Lawmakers react
Woelfel said an “agenda by certain senators” overpowered legislative procedure.
“I’m disappointed that the rules of the Senate were just roughshod run over tonight. I’m disappointed,” Woelfel said. “It wasn’t about any particular bill. But if we don’t go by the rules that are set, we’re letting people down.”
Smith said the passage of Senate Bill 474 was agreed upon by most lawmakers, regardless of technicalities.
“We’ll find out if it was legal or not if someone challenges it,” Smith said. “But, as far as I’m concerned, … everything was in order.”
House Speaker Roger Hanshaw, R-Clay, declined to comment after the legislature’s lower chamber gaveled out at midnight. “We’ll talk about all that next week,” he told WVPB.
Both Garcia and Smith said their party used procedural rules to advance their policy priorities.
“You’re damn right,” Garcia told reporters after the chamber gaveled out. “I’m gonna do every single thing I can to try to stop bad policies from happening.”
“It’s just part of the process. They tried to kill it that way, and we tried to save it this way,” Smith said. “It’s all part of the system.”
Garcia argued the state legislature’s Republican supermajority allows some lawmakers to circumvent the rules. The state’s Senate has the highest concentration of one party in a single legislative chamber in the United States.
“They have the ability to do a lot of these different things,” Garcia said. “It just goes to show we have a lack of balance.”
Smith said he was personally unsure about the procedure that occurred, and felt Tarr or a lawyer “above my pay grade” was better equipped to speak to the legality of the bill’s passage.
“Every bill can be challenged in court,” he said. “This one might be.”
In his first term as Senate president and thirteenth year as a state lawmaker, Smith described Saturday night as a first.
“Who knows what lies ahead?” he said.
Del. Anitra Hamilton, D-Monongalia, urges members of the West Virginia House of Delegates to reject Senate Bill 474 on the chamber’s floor Saturday.
Photo Credit: Perry Bennett/WV Legislative Photography
Extensive debate
Just before the Senate frenzy, members of the House spent hours debating Senate Bill 474.
Like the Senate, the House took steps to limit discussion. The chamber cut off comments after particularly impassioned opposition to the bill from each of the state legislature’s only Black members: Del. Anitra Hamilton, D-Monongalia, House Minority Leader Sean Hornbuckle, D-Cabell and Del. Hollis Lewis, D-Kanawha.
The three lawmakers urged their colleagues to reject the bill outright.
“We keep passing legislation that more than likely will affect people who look like me,” Hamilton said. “We’ve got to do something different, guys.”
“You’re gonna tell me, ‘I had to do it, man. I don’t believe in it, but I had to do it. I had to do it,’” Hornbuckle said to his fellow delegates. “You didn’t have to do nothing.”
The West Virginia House of Delegates reviewed Senate Bill 474 Saturday. The bill would eliminate DEI initiatives across the state government — plus entities it funds, like public universities.
The West Virginia House of Delegates is now reviewing Senate Bill 474, which would eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives across the state government — plus entities it funds, like public universities.
Abolishing DEI is a central administrative priority for Gov. Patrick Morrisey, and an objective he shares with President Donald Trump and the Republican Party at large. But the bill has been a wide source of contention among Democratic lawmakers, and has even garnered pushback from the governor’s own party.
That debate manifested on the House floor Saturday, where delegates set forth a total of 24 amendments to the controversial bill from members of both parties.
Updated on Saturday, April 12, 2025 at 10:35 p.m.
When the House began discussing Senate Bill 474, it set a one-hour cap on floor discussions over amendments to the bill. Lawmakers passed that threshold, which meant only those who sponsored each amendment were eligible to speak in the last stages of discussion.
The House rejected a handful of final tweaks to the bill.
That included amendments from Del. Kayla Young, D-Kanawha, that would have added political ideology to the identity groups unable to be considered in the hiring, admissions and promotion processes; shielded private and parochial schools from certain restrictions in the bill; and added language protecting “free, robust and uninhibited debate” at institutions of higher education.
Another rejected amendment came from House Minority Leader Del. Sean Hornbuckle, D-Cabell, which aimed to ensure that employees and contractors at colleges and universities have free speech protections and means to appeal “imposed discipline” over alleged violations of the state’s DEI repeal.
The House has moved to debating the full text of Senate Bill 474.
Updated on Saturday, April 12, 2025 at 10:13 p.m.
While some early revisions to the anti-DEI bill found consensus from the House, a whole lot more have been rejected.
As the debate over DEI stretches into the final hours of this year’s legislative session, the House has already rejected 13 of the 24 amendments originally proposed for Senate Bill 474.
Several of the rejected proposals came from House Minority Leader Del. Sean Hornbuckle, D-Cabell.
Among them: an amendment giving colleges an extra year to report back on how they are complying with new DEI restrictions; an amendment to let colleges highlight how they support “underserved” identity groups in grant applications; and an amendment adding explicit language that colleges will not be prevented from providing financial aid to specific identity groups.
Del. Sean Hornbuckle, D-Cabell, introduced numerous amendments to Senate Bill 474, a proposed ban on diversity, equity and inclusion programs in the state. He is pictured here in January 2025.
Photo Credit: Perry Bennett/WV Legislative Photography
Del. Kayla Young, D-Kanawha, introduced a total of 12 amendments to the full House chamber, the majority of which were also rejected.
These amendments included an assurance that “preferences granted to veterans” in state law are not affected by DEI cuts, protections for the content in university libraries and purported clarifications on access to college scholarships and visa eligibility for international students.
Throughout floor discussion, Del. Brandon Steele, R-Raleigh, routinely characterized Democrats’ amendments as efforts to circumvent restrictions on DEI at large and find ways to weaken its core intent.
Another unsuccessful amendment from Young would have ensured the bill would not impact “department, division, agency, or board of this state” in their ability to access “community programs” or partake in “private sector” partnerships.
“It’s not a back door. It’s an open front door,” Steele said of the amendment. “We might have put a fence outside, but it’s an open front door.”
Young also proposed an amendment to remove references to “color blind” processes from the bill, arguing it was an outdated term. Ultimately, it was rejected.
Meanwhile, Democrats argued that their amendments provided crucial modifications to a bill that could have unintended consequences.
Discussion on the bill was still active as of 10:13 p.m.
Original Story: House Votes Down First Spate Of DEI Amendments; Some Pass
Published Saturday, April 12, 2025 at 8:54 p.m.
Del. Bill Flanigan, R-Ohio — who has vocally opposed the bill — sponsored an amendment that would have clarified restrictions on DEI in public schools “shall not be based on isolated comments, classroom discussion or misunderstandings.” His amendment was shot down by a verbal majority vote.
Two amendments from Del. Anitra Hamilton, D-Monongalia, were rejected by the chamber. One would have made all provisions of the bill consistent among identity groups; currently, some parts of the bill apply to race, ethnicity and national origin as categories, but not gender.
Del. Brandon Steele, R-Raleigh, argued that amendment could have made it hard to protect “female sports.” Hamilton disagreed, but ultimately did not secure support from a majority of the House.
Another amendment from Hamilton would have included language to protect residents from discrimination on the basis of hair type.
Del. Anitra Hamilton, D-Monongalia, introduced amendments to Senate Bill 474 to make its text consistent across identity groups and add protections from discrimination on the basis of hair type.
Photo Credit: Perry Bennett/WV Legislative Photography
Steele likened the amendment to the CROWN Act, a bill passed by several states nationwide to protect against hair type discrimination, but which he said the House floor had not considered in full. He also argued forms of hair type discrimination would already fall under non-discrimination protections based around “national, origin or religion.”
“We do need to have a conversation,” Hamilton said. “There are specific barriers in place that are preventing certain classes of people, specifically African Americans, from being hired because of their hairstyle and their hair texture.”
That amendment was also voted down by the House.
Successful amendments
The House did adopt an amendment from House Minority Leader Sean Hornbuckle, D-Cabell, that explicitly states nothing in the bill’s text can be used to curtail West Virginia Human Rights Act, which extends residents “equal opportunity” to employment and public resources.
The House also passed an amendment from Del. Kayla Young, D-Kanawha, which would affirm that the bill could not restrict universities in ways which would prevent them from meeting “accreditation standards.”
State lawmakers have paved the way for a new center at West Virginia University for civics education, which would focus on “classical western history and culture.”
State lawmakers have paved the way for a new center at West Virginia University for civics education, which would focus on “classical western history and culture.”
On Saturday, members of the West Virginia House of Delegates convened for the final day of this year’s legislative session. They voted to approve changes set forth by the West Virginia Senate to House Bill 3297, which would require the state’s flagship university to open the Washington Center for Civics, Culture and Statesmanship.
Their proposal just needs the governor’s approval to take effect. The idea for the center is modeled after similar state-established civics centers at universities in Ohio, Florida, North Carolina and more, according to Del. Pat McGeehan, R-Hancock, lead sponsor and House majority leader.
The bill passed the House on March 21. During floor arguments, proponents said the center would expand educational opportunities on campus, plus attract new faculty and students.
Opponents worried that requiring WVU to open a new center bypassed the university’s authority, and argued subject matter covered by the center already exists within other university departments.
At the time, Del. John Williams, D-Monongalia, said he was also worried the bill did not allocate funding to the center, especially in light of the $45 million budget shortfall the university faced in 2023.
The version of the bill that has now passed the West Virginia Legislature still does not specify where funding for the center will come from.
During its review in the Senate, the bill underwent modifications affirming that the university will have oversight over the Washington Center, removing text that described the center as “independent.”
The center would be run by a director who is an “expert on the western tradition, the American founding and American constitutional thought,” according to the bill’s text.
The Senate adopted an amendment from Sen. Mike Stuart, R-Kanawha, that would clarify that members of the state legislature cannot work at the center or serve as its director for up to two years after the end of their term at the State Capitol.
Gov. Patrick Morrisey now has 15 days to veto or sign off on House Bill 3297. If he does not act on the bill, it will become law by default.
The West Virginia House of Delegates voted Friday to pass Senate Bill 837, which would eliminate the West Virginia Office of Equal Opportunity. That office is charged with protecting residents from discrimination.
The West Virginia Legislature has dealt a death knell to the office it created just a few years ago to protect residents from discrimination.
On Friday afternoon, the West Virginia House of Delegates voted 90 to 9 to pass Senate Bill 837, which would eliminate the West Virginia Office of Equal Opportunity.
Two weeks earlier, the bill passed the West Virginia Senate by a vote of 29 to 4. Lead sponsor Sen. Patricia Rucker, R-Jefferson, has argued the office’s work already falls under the West Virginia Division of Personnel.
Established by lawmakers in 2022, the office is tasked with ensuring the state complies with non-discrimination and disability accommodation laws. The bill mandating its creation passed both the House and Senate unanimously, and was sponsored by former Senate President Craig Blair, R-Berkeley, on behalf of then Gov. Jim Justice.
Despite its fairly recent bipartisan approval, the office became ensnared this year in a push to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives on both the state and federal levels. Gov. Patrick Morrisey has set the repeal of DEI as a central priority for his first year in office.
During his state of the state address in February, Gov. Patrick Morrisey called on state lawmakers to help eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion programs statewide.
Photo Credit: Perry Bennett/WV Legislative Photography
“We’re going to root out DEI and eradicate the woke virus,” Morrisey told lawmakers at the start of this year’s legislative session.
While Senate Bill 837 still has not yet become law, nonprofit newsroom West Virginia Watch reported April 5 that state officials have already moved to dissolve the office entirely, in possible violation of the West Virginia Code.
The office’s website is no longer publicly accessible, and its personnel have been reassigned elsewhere within the state government — despite state law still mandating the office’s operation.
On the House floor, Del. Hollis Lewis, D-Kanawha, asked about the status of the office and its state obligations.
“During the committee process, we learned that this office was eliminated, obviously without our authorization,” Lewis said.
Del. Chris Phillips, R-Barbour, said that “responsibilities of the office were moved” elsewhere within the West Virginia Department of Administration, which contains the Division of Personnel.
All of the office’s duties “are still being taken care of,” Phillips said.
The state legislature is scheduled to adjourn April 12. To become official, the bill eliminating the Office of Equal Opportunity must be okayed once more by the state senate, then signed off by the governor.
