Legislation

Often, seemingly innocuous licensing bills have provisions including expansive and vague language which could render individuals with a criminal background, no matter what crimes they have been convicted of or how long ago their conviction was, unable to procure certain occupational licenses.

This bill was designed to strengthen a law that requires courts to consider a criminal defendant’s ability to pay before assessing exorbitant costs, fines or fees.

This bill would have granted access to student names, addresses, and phone numbers to military recruiters unless the student or parent of the student opted out of having this information made available.

The Reproductive Privacy Act preserves the status quo of abortion healthcare in Rhode Island, and ensures that the shifting ideology of the Supreme Court does not impede upon a person’s right to choose.

In a remarkably quick beginning to the legislative session, a resolution to adopt rules for the House of Representatives for the years 2019-2020 made its way out of committee and to a floor vote within the first two weeks of the session.

This year, the General Assembly overwhelmingly approved deeply troubling legislation requiring judges to bar from owning animals not only anyone convicted of "unnecessary cruelty," but any other animal abuse offense.

Broadly-worded legislation dealing with the isolation by caretakers of elders and dependent adults sparked concerns from the ACLU and elder advocacy groups.

The state's medical marijuana law was crafted to put a high priority on patient privacy, but that consideration has been placed on the back burner a number of times in recent years in the name of public safety.

There were a number of bills introduced this year seeking to improve school security by imposing police-type enforcement measures into the school setting, including one buried within the 2019 budget.