Legislation

In June, the House approved legislation prohibiting any person convicted of a sex offense with a minor from holding employment in a wide range of jobs, even if that job never involved interaction with a child.

In June, the House approved legislation overhauling the state’s sex offender registration and community notification laws, replacing them with federal standards so costly that few states have chosen to implement them.

A set of bills dealing with the state’s littering laws will result in thousands of dollars of fines for Rhode Islanders, and thousands of dollars in proceeds for local law enforcement.

Legislation creating a task force on employee misclassification and the underground economy contained one of the more dangerous anti-privacy provisions of the year.

In June, the House passed legislation governing the transmission of mental health civil certification records to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), the database used to determine who is eligible to purchase a weapon under state and federal laws.

Another part of the Attorney General’s package of legislation dealing with computer crimes carried still more concerns about the breadth of these changes.

In May, the House overwhelmingly approved legislation to protect the freedom of political speech. The legislation repealed a section of law that is largely regarded as unconstitutional, as it prohibits the distribution of anonymous political literature.

While undermining the medical marijuana program, the General Assembly failed to make productive changes in the state’s “War on Drugs” by expanding the state’s Good Samaritan Act.

Complaints by Rhode Island’s veterans that they had been discriminated against in housing decisions because of their veteran status prompted legislation to make such discrimination illegal.