2025 LEGISLATIVE PRIORITIES

Health Equity

Unconscious (Implicit) Bias Training Licensing Criterion. Require unconscious (implicit) bias training become an eligibility criterion for all health care professionals licensed by the Virginia Board of Medicine.
Expanding Medicaid Services to Incarcerated Pregnant Women. This would be budget language for a 1115 waiver to allow Medicaid to pay for services for services for pregnant women in jails (not prisons – yet). Partnering with Virginia Poverty Law Center (VPLC).
Presumptive Eligibility for Pregnant Women. Allow pregnant women to be immediately enrolled for Medicaid without waiting for up to 45 days for Medicaid paperwork to be processed. Mississippi just passed this. Partnering with VPLC.
Cover All Kids. Provide health insurance for undocumented children who would be eligible for Medicaid other than their immigration status.
Access to Care: VICPP helped expose the fact that Managed Care Organizations (MCOs) with the state Medicaid contracts were not adequately serving pregnant women. The press conference we organized explained that pregnant women were unable to get basic appointments, especially in the second and third trimesters. VICPP will support a budget amendment to ensure that MCOs increase the use of community-based providers shown to improve maternal health.

Affordable Housing

Faith and Housing for the Commonwealth. The affordable housing crisis in Virginia means we need to streamline projects to build affordable housing. This bill would allow faith communities to build affordable housing on their property without having to go through rezoning, fighting “not in my backyard” attitudes with “yes in God’s backyard” (YIGBY).
Funding for affordable housing. Virginia needs to address our housing unit shortage, strengthen tenants’ rights, and combat rising eviction rates.
Tenant Protections. Support people who rent by providing clarity in rental applications, stronger enforcement mechanisms for localities, and protections against frivolous evictions.

Criminal Justice Reform

Expanding Higher Education in Prison. VICPP will help lead on a bill to expand higher education in prison. This is a priority grassroots effort.
Youth Shackling. Shackling young people is still a practice being used in courtrooms in the Commonwealth of Virginia. “According to the Gault Center, a youth rights group, 39 states plus Puerto Rico and Washington D.C., now limit or prohibit the indiscriminate shackling of children. Virginia’s one of only 11 states in the country to continue the practice.”
Restoration of Rights. This bill would amend the Virginia Constitution to restore voting rights to persons convicted of a felony after they have completed their sentence. Currently, the governor has the sole authority to restore voting rights. In Virginia, a constitutional amendment needs to be passed by a simple majority vote in both chambers over two consecutive legislative sessions to be certified for the ballot.
Counsel at First Appearance. In Virginia, people detained pretrial can sit in jail for days or even weeks before they can challenge their detention, often resulting in a loss of employment, housing, access to medical care, and more, with effects rippling through families and communities. This Counsel at First Appearance legislation, or CAFA, would ensure counsel is provided to everyone in custody at their first appearance and would allow the defendant to have their arguments for bond to be heard on that day, if they so desire.

Economic Justice/Supporting Working Families

Child Labor: Expanding the list of workplaces where children are not allowed to be employed, and increasing regulation of staffing agencies that employ children.
Child care. VICPP will support the initiatives of the Virginia Promise Partnership to eliminate (or reduce) childcare waitlists for subsidized childcare.
Paid Sick Days. Ensure that all workers in Virginia have access to paid sick days.
- Click here to read the Paid Sick Day Fact Sheet
- Click here to Learn More
Minimum wage. VICPP will support coalition efforts to raise the minimum wage.

Other Issues