The first day of July marks a new fiscal year and with it numerous laws passed during the 2025 legislative session of the General Assembly take effect.
During the session, 599 bills were signed into law, the majority of which became effective Tuesday. The laws address everything from driving regulations to media protections and styrofoam use.
For drivers, all adult passengers in a vehicle must now wear a seatbelt when the vehicle is in motion on a public highway. A driver who fails to stop for pedestrians can receive a traffic infraction and should the failure result in serious bodily injury or death of someone lawfully crossing a highway, the driver can be charged with a class 1 misdemeanor. Also affecting drivers, the DMV will now add non-apparent disabilities on a driver’s license when requested by the applicant with a signed statement confirming the condition. The DMV must also implement a program to assist officers with communicating with autistic drivers.
For students, school boards must expand on policies and procedures relating to the prevention and prohibition of bullying to include internet bullying that occurs off-campus between students enrolled in the school system. Public schools must also include cyberbullying procedures in their guidelines and codes of conduct. Students will also be unable to have cellphones during the school day from the arrival to dismissal bell. A restriction was already in place, but now becomes law. Social media companies will have to restrict users under the age of 16 to one hour per day. Public school principals and private school heads must report certain information to parents of enrolled students within 24 hours of a confirmed or suspected school-connected overdose.
For the influencers, any child under the age of 16 must be compensated when taking part in content creation.
Food service businesses with more than 20 locations in Virginia and schools and programs utilizing federal food programs such as the National School Lunch Program are prohibited from using styrofoam goods including containers, cups and plates. The ban expands to all food service next year.
Utilities are also impacted by a new law. The Emergency Utilities Protection Act prevents the disconnection of utility services before an account is 60 days past due for customers of SCC regulated utilities and 45 days for municipal utilities, when the temperature is below 32 degrees or above 92 degrees, on Fridays, weekends and state holidays and the day before a state holiday, during a governor-declared state of emergency and for those who have received state energy assistance in the past 12 months.
For a full list of new laws, visit https://dls.virginia.gov/pubs/idc/idc25.pdf.
