2025 Wyoming Legislature Preview
Marguerite Herman, LWVWY Lobbyist
307-6730-8095, marguerite.herman@gmail.com
Week #2: Jan. 20, 2025
The Freedom Caucus flexed its muscle in the first week of the 2025 Wyoming Legislature with bills that further restrict registration and voting and direct public funding away from public schools. Most come with many Freedom Caucus member co-sponsors, which assures passage through the chamber.
About 400 bills and resolutions have been written so far, and the Legislative Service Office (LSO) has about 350 additional drafting requests submitted to its staff. This week will continue bill introductions and referrals to the standing committees, where they will be debated and amended and then sent to the full House and Senate. Committees give the public their best chance to give input on the pros and cons. Follow committee meetings and the floor debate calendar on the LSO website’s daily meeting page.
The LSO’s Legislature Citizen Guidebook is an excellent reference for participating in the session, complete with seating charts, phone numbers, and Capitol maps.
The Senate may continue to introduce bills until Jan. 29 and the House by Feb. 3, but it’s fair to expect many to die as one deadline after another falls for this session. (Consult the session schedule on the LSO website.)
Meanwhile, the House and Senate Rules Committees have worked on updating an ethics complaint procedure and debated how to use electronic voting in their chambers to record every vote and display results immediately. Both proposed rules are intended to increase accountability and transparency. House and Senate members will vote this week on their own rules and the one joint rule on ethics complaints. Find the proposed rules here. House members agreed on the need to secure voting buttons, maybe leaving it to the chief clerks to actually enter the votes.
Elections bills of particular concern to LWVWY would require people to produce extra proof of citizenship, proof of physical residence, and proof of 30 days in Wyoming before they vote. That requirement would disenfranchise people who don’t get mail at home, who don’t have a utility bill, who are homeless, and who would have trouble producing citizenship documents so they can continue to vote. County clerks have noted the same problems and wonder why additional restrictions are necessary.
Additional voting restrictions proposed by the Freedom Caucus include “pen and paper” ballots, removing drop boxes, and hand-counting audits. One of those bills also would move up the primary by two weeks to the Tuesday after the first Monday in August.
The residency and citizenship bills are on third reading in the House on Monday and should be over to the Senate by Tuesday, with more to follow quickly behind. LWVWY will continue to support registering and voting procedures that are secure and ensure integrity while making the ballot box as accessible as possible for eligible voters in Wyoming. You may add your individual voice to this advocacy by contacting any and all legislators with that message. Find all these bills on LWVWY’s bill tracker.
The number of elections-related bills this session is pretty remarkable. SF98 would make school board elections a partisan race, and another HB236 would make all county elections except commission non-partisan. HB165 would prohibit local governments from using ranked-choice voting. HB228 would prohibit use of private funds for elections, including voter education and outreach. Other bills would clamp down on independent candidates once primaries were done. HB187 would extend a voting break during the workday from one to two hours, to include early voting.
HB240 has more to do with accountability of elected officials, to repeal a section of state law that authorizes the governor to appoint of an acting Secretary of State in cases of impeachment or removal from office.
Another major issue for LWVWY this session is adequate public school funding and use of education funds outside our accountable k-12 public schools. HB199 is the Wyoming Freedom Scholarship Act, an updated voucher act from last year. It drops any income eligibility requirement and draws on $40 million from federal mineral royalties deposited in the School Foundation Program account. It is public school funding, with no accountability.
In the area of healthcare, HB231 sets aside $2.2 million to pay for medical education at the University of Utah. HB222 gives providers the right to refuse certain procedures, while HB239 prohibits the state from denying a person’s right to have an abortion before viability of the fetus or to protect the mother’s life or health. HB121 attempts to require provider pricing transparency that is already required by federal law and that Wyoming hospitals are already following.
The LWVWY priorities for this session can be followed on the bill tracker—Bill Track 50—included on our website, wyominglwv.org:
- Constitutional Issues
- School Funding and Finance
- Access to Healthcare
- Ballot Initiatives
- Elections and Voter Services
- Government Accountability and Transparency
- Process of Open Meetings
- Public and Press Access to Government Work
- Rules and Procedures of the Government
You can track all league priority issues through our BillTrack50 stakeholder sheet.
Contact Marguerite Herman for information on the LSO website. LSO website is www.wyoleg.gov. LWVWY is www.wyominglwv.org.