June 5, 2025
Thank you to the many coalition partners, legislators, and community members who advocated alongside us for economic justice and racial equity in the 2025 General Assembly! Together we achieved several victories and set the stage for future advocacy. Among this year’s accomplishments are laws that will:
Read on to learn about these victories, successful efforts to defeat harmful bills, as well as legislation we’ll be bringing back in future years.
Health and Benefits Equity
Workplace Justice
Human Right to Housing
Education Stability
Our communities are stronger when people have access to quality healthcare and to public benefits to make it through tough times. During this year’s legislative session, we successfully advocated for policies to ensure that people with limited English proficiency have timely and consistent access to interpretation and translation in state-run services and programs and to expand low-income Marylanders’ access to community health workers. We also supported bills on medical debt protections, the rights of incarcerated trans people, and access to public benefits programs, among others.
When Marylanders with limited English proficiency (LEP) try to navigate state-run services, such as food and cash assistance benefits, they frequently encounter agencies and programs that do not provide legally required translation and interpretation. But there was no requirement for state agencies to have a language access plan on how they would meet the needs of LEP communities. And the Trump administration rescinded a nearly 25-year-old executive order that had required federal agencies to provide language assistance services to people with LEP. In response, we collaborated with the Maryland Language Access Equity Alliance and other language access advocates to pass the bill, which builds upon Maryland’s existing language access law by:
The Governor has signed the bill. We thank Delegate Gabriel Acevero, HB 1473’s sponsor, Committee Chair Joseline Peña-Melnyk; the Maryland General Assembly; and the Moore-Miller Administration for taking action to strengthen Maryland’s language access law and standing firmly in solidarity with our communities with LEP and disabilities. Thanks also to the many language access advocates who worked on the bill, including the Maryland Developmental Disabilities Council, Jubilee Association of Maryland, Ethiopian Eritrean Special Needs Community, Maryland Equity Coalition for People with Disabilities, Equal Access Language Services, LLC, Maryland Legal Aid, Catholic Charities, and Baltimore City Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs, as well as people with limited English proficiency and people with disabilities who urged their legislators to take action.
Community health workers (CHWs) are frontline public health workers who are trusted members of their communities and provide health-related education and information to patients. They address social determinants of health, like access to food, transportation, and housing, by helping patients navigate social services. To raise awareness of the importance of CHWs in advancing health equity, the PJC and fellow members of the Community Health Workers’ Empowerment Coalition of Maryland advocated for HB 65, which would have required the Governor to annually declare May 8 as Community Health Worker Appreciation Day. (May 8, 2018, is the date CHW certification was signed into law.) Unfortunately, the law did not pass. Thank you to sponsor Delegate Heather Bagnall.
Through our CHWs Empowerment Coalition of Maryland, we successfully advocated for legislation that will help create a more sustainable source of funding for community health workers (CHWs). Under federal law, nonprofit hospitals must conduct a Community Health Needs Assessment every three years and invest financially in the health needs of the communities that they serve. HB 871 will add a category of community benefit to that requirement, incentivizing hospitals to invest community benefit dollars into a formalized partnership with a community-based organization to develop a CHW workforce to provide services to hospital patients, including patients who do not qualify for Medicaid due to their immigration status, to improve health outcomes. The original bill would have set minimum requirements for what must be included in a Memorandum of Understanding between the hospital and community-based organization creating these programs, including a requirement to provide health insurance to uninsured CHWs if they request it. Instead of mandating an MOU between the parties, the bill was amended to provide guidance on what should be included in such agreements. HB 871 passed the General Assembly and the Governor has signed it. Thank you to sponsor Delegate Heather Bagnall and other advocacy allies, including Reverend Dr. Terris King of Liberty Grace Church of God, Dr. Panagis Galiatsatos, and Elizabeth Vanderpool.
Policies and practices of the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services (DPSCS) frequently harm incarcerated trans people. DPSCS fails to house people based on gender identity, does not adequately address the violence they face from staff and other incarcerated people and instead holds trans people in solitary confinement, and fails to provide sufficient access to health care, among other violations of the federal laws, including the Prison Rape Elimination Act. To hold DPSCS accountable, we successfully advocated with fellow members of the Trans Rights Advocacy Coalition (TRAC) for language in the 2025 budget that requires the department to issue a report on its treatment of incarcerated trans people. The budget language also includes a provision for withholding $100,000 from DPSCS’s budget if the report is not comprehensive as required.
In addition to the DPSCS advocacy, TRAC, the PJC, and numerous allies defeated all of the anti-trans bills before the legislature and several of the bills we supported passed, including bills to decriminalize the transmission of HIV (HB 39), maintain Medicaid funding for telehealth services (SB 372 / HB 869), and create comprehensive health education in Maryland schools (HB 161; although it passed with a provision that allows parents to opt their children out of the human sexuality portion of the curriculum that our testimony unsuccessfully asked the legislature to remove). The Governor has signed the bills. Thank you to bill sponsors Delegate Kris Fair, Senator Will Smith, Senator Pamela Beidle, Delegate Joseline Peña-Melnyk, and Delegate Vanessa Atterbeary.
The Prevent Electronic Benefits Theft Act of 2023 requires the Maryland Department of Human Services (DHS) to reimburse households whose food and cash assistance benefits were stolen. But DHS introduced HB 175 / SB 232 in 2025, which would have gutted the 2023 law by allowing reimbursement of stolen benefits to be zeroed out in future fiscal years. After the PJC and allies opposed the bill, DHS withdrew it right before the bill hearing. But then DHS added the same bill language into a last-minute amendment to the Budget Reconciliation and Financing Act (BRFA) without informing advocates. Fortunately, we were able to collectively advocate with the BRFA Conference Committee against adoption of the amendment. The Conference Committee reached a compromise that rejected the amendment, maintained the underlying reimbursement program, and introduced a yearly budgetary cap of $30 million in reimbursement of stolen benefits. We thank our allies Maryland Family Network, Maryland Hunger Solutions, Homeless Persons Representation Project, Catholic Charities, Maryland Center on Economic Policy, Health Care for the Homeless, and other economic justice allies for their advocacy to protect this vital program.
SB 492 / HB 849 would have established the Maryland Commission to Study the Dental Hygienist Shortage. The bill would not only have required stakeholders to study the workforce shortage for dental hygienists but would have also tasked the Commission with determining how to better integrate community health workers in dental settings to address gaps in continuity of care and patient education. The bill unfortunately did not pass this year, but we look forward to supporting it again in the future. Thank you to the Maryland Dental Action Coalition for leading advocacy on this bill and to sponsors Senator Mike McKay and Delegate Lesley Lopez.
HB 268 / SB 981 strengthens the Medical Debt Protection Act. It establishes income thresholds and reduces out-of-pocket expenses for low-income patients who qualify for financial assistance. It also prohibits hospitals from suing patients for debts at or below $500, a lawsuit ban that had been a goal of medical debt advocates for the last several years. We also supported SB 349 / HB 428, which prohibits medical providers from placing a lien on a patient’s home. The Governor has signed the bills. Thank you to sponsors Delegate Lorig Charkoudian, Senator Stephen Hershey, Jr., Senator Sara Love, and Delegate Elizabeth Embry. We also thank Economic Action Maryland and other medical debt allies for their advocacy.
The Preserve Telehealth Act of 2025 permanently preserves telehealth access for Maryland Medical Assistance (Medicaid) patients and the definition of telehealth to include audio-only conversations. The bill passed and the Governor has signed it. Thank you to sponsors Senator Pamela Beidle and Delegate Joseline Peña-Melnyk, as well as our ally the Maryland Behavioral Health Coalition for their leadership in this successful advocacy.
SB 83 / HB 845 would have established an Overdose and Infectious Disease Prevention Services Program administered by community-based organizations to provide overdose prevention sites. It would also have required that the Maryland Department of Health develop these sites in urban, suburban, and rural areas. The bill unfortunately did not pass, and we will support it in a future year. Thank you to sponsors Senator Shelly Hettleman and Delegate Joseline Peña-Melnyk and our harm reduction allies, including the Baltimore Harm Reduction Coalition, Heath Care for the Homeless, Behavioral Health System Baltimore, and the Maryland Behavioral Health Coalition.
HB 556 / SB 370 would have amended existing criminal law to remove certain items that could be used to consume drugs from what is considered “drug paraphernalia,” effectively decriminalizing possession of those items. This bill also did not pass, and we plan to support it in a future year. Thank you to sponsors Delegate Karen Simpson and Senator Corey McCray and our harm reduction allies, including the Baltimore Harm Reduction Coalition, Maryland Office of the Public Defender, BRIDGES, 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East, and the Maryland Behavioral Health Coalition.
The Health and Benefits Equity team members advocating for these bills included attorneys Ashley Woolard, Sam Williamson, and Michelle Madaio and paralegal David Reische.
Care should be at the heart of our healthcare system and workplaces. But these systems are often set up in ways that undermine the well-being of patients and workers. Caring for all Marylanders means ensuring adequate staffing in nursing homes, hospitals, and home care, and paying care workers good wages, for the well-being of both those receiving and providing healthcare. It means ensuring that workers can care for their own health or that of a loved one without worrying about losing their paycheck. Together with members of the Caring Across Maryland coalition, our Workplace Justice Project advocated for policies that bolster jobs for care workers, increase access to care, and improve transparency. With the Time to Care coalition, we opposed efforts that would delay implementation of Maryland’s paid family and medical leave program. We also advocated for bills that would have protected workers from workplace fraud.
Many nursing homes face critical staffing shortages, leading to high staff turnover and impacting quality of care. But there is little transparency into, and oversight over, nursing home spending. As amended, the passage of HB 933 / SB 679 will require the Maryland Department of Health to conduct a study on all Maryland nursing home cost reports to identify what percentage of their revenue is currently spent on direct care staff wages and benefits. The Governor has signed the bill. Thank you to sponsors Delegate Ashanti Martinez and Senator Jim Rosapepe.
It is estimated that Maryland has the highest prevalence of Alzheimer’s disease in the country. The passage of HB 1004 / SB 748 will require the Maryland Department of Health to include treatment for Alzheimer’s disease in public health outreach and programming, as well as include data on prevalence and hospitalization rates on a website. The Governor has signed the bill. Thank you to sponsors Delegate Ashanti Martinez and Senator Benjamin Kramer.
While the demand for home care is high, home care workers receive very low wages. The passage of HB 1142 / SB 920 will establish an Interested Parties Advisory Group that will give consumers, home care workers, and agency providers a seat at the table to evaluate Medicaid Provider Reimbursement rates. The Governor has signed the bill. Thank you to sponsors Delegate Heather Bagnall and Senator Dawn Gile.
Many Marylanders struggle to find home care workers who meet their needs. The passage of HB 1478 will require the Maryland Department of Health to report to the legislature on its plan to establish an online home care directory, a dashboard to enable consumers to find workers who speak their language, have the right certifications, and are available when needed. The Governor has signed the bill. Thank you to sponsor Delegate Terri Hill.
Maryland hospitals face critical staffing shortages. HB 905 / SB 720 would have established safe staffing committees at each hospital to address staffing challenges through problem-solving and collaboration with flexible staffing plans submitted annually. Amendments to the bill reduced the scope of staffing committees to not explicitly require staffing ratio recommendations and removed the requirement that the staffing plans are posted publicly on the hospitals’ websites. Staffing committees would still have been required to post annual reports in areas accessible to patients and make those reports available to patients on demand. Unfortunately, the bill did not pass. We will continue fighting to protect patient lives and worker safety by addressing unsafe staffing conditions in hospitals. Thank you to sponsors Delegate Jennifer White Holland, Senator Malcom Augustine, and Senator Clarence Lam.
All of us need time to care—for new babies, aging parents, loved ones with serious health needs or disabilities, and/or ourselves. Yet since the enactment of the Time to Care Act in 2022, Maryland has delayed implementing the paid family and medical leave program twice. And this year Governor Moore’s administration sought an additional 18-month delay. We opposed the delay and advocated to implement the FAMLI program on schedule. Nevertheless, the delay is still in place. We will continue to encourage the State to implement paid family and medical leave as soon as possible so that workers do not have to continue making excruciating choices between caring for their own health or that of a loved one and keeping their paycheck.
Employers looking to evade labor laws often engage in independent contractor misclassification, which denies workers full pay and basic labor protections and excludes them from the social safety net. This year, the legislature considered two bills that would have returned millions of dollars of rightfully earned wages and benefits to Maryland workers and unpaid taxes to state coffers. The PJC testified in support of HB 632 and HB 1096 / SB 938, which would have leveled the playing field so that unscrupulous employers do not have a competitive edge over those already playing by the rules. The latter bill, drafted and championed by Attorney General Anthony Brown, additionally proposed a major overhaul in the state’s ability to go after bad actors. While neither of these bills passed this year, we are hopeful they laid the groundwork to move this issue forward in years to come.
The Workplace Justice Project team members advocating for these bills included attorneys Sam Williamson and Amy Gellatly.
The PJC’s Human Right to Housing Project stands with tenants to protect and expand their right to safe, habitable, affordable, and non-discriminatory housing and their right to fair treatment by Maryland’s landlord-tenant laws, courts, and agencies. As a member of the Renters United Maryland coalition’s steering committee, we successfully advocated for bills in the 2025 General Assembly that will provide tenants with advance notice of a scheduled eviction date, fund Maryland’s Access to Counsel in Evictions program, and require landlords to assess and remediate mold. We lessened the impact of a bill intended to speed up evictions in wrongful detainer cases. We also worked on bills that would have enabled counties to pass good cause eviction laws, prevented landlords from discriminating against potential tenants based on criminal history, and provided for eviction prevention funding.
HB 767 / SB 442 will require landlords throughout Maryland to notify renters at least six days in advance of the scheduled eviction date. Local jurisdictions can increase this notice period to 14 days or decrease it to four days. Baltimore City is the only jurisdiction in the state that currently has a similar requirement. This law will provide for more accountability for landlords than Baltimore City’s current notice law and expand this protection to tenants in the rest of the state. As a result, no family facing eviction in Maryland will have to go to sleep wondering whether the Sheriff and the landlord will show up the next morning to make them homeless and cause them to lose their belongings. A notice of the scheduled eviction date provides families with the certainty they need to move their belongings and reduce the disruption of eviction to their lives. Originally called the Tenant Possessions Recovery Act, the bill had required the landlord to provide renters with a ten-day window to reclaim their belongings after an eviction – this provision passed the House of Delegates but was stripped by the Senate. The Governor has signed the bill. Thank you to bill sponsors Senator Charles Sydnor, III, and Delegate Jennifer Terrasa. Delegate Vaughn Stewart was also a champion for this bill in the House.
All Marylanders deserve the chance to put down roots in our communities, yet large corporate landlords file more than 5,000 eviction cases per year without providing a reason for the eviction. When corporate landlords engage in no-cause evictions, families cannot stay rooted in their schools, jobs, and support networks; and renters do not report unsafe conditions out of fear of eviction. The whole community suffers. SB 651 / HB 709 would have allowed local jurisdictions to pass their own laws that prevent landlords from evicting people without a good reason. Unfortunately, Senators caved to pressure from landlord lobbyists, and the bill did not receive a vote in the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee. Thank you to sponsors Senator Anthony Muse and Delegate Jheanelle Wilkins for your support of the bill.
In 2021, Maryland became a national leader in ensuring that all income-qualified renters would have the right to obtain legal representation when facing an eviction. This year, we successfully advocated for SB 154 / HB 103, which will provide $14 million in annual funding for the Access to Counsel in Evictions (ACE) program through fiscal year 2028. The original bill would have established permanent funding for the program. The amended bill that passed extends the $14 million annual funding for the program through fiscal year 2028. The ACE program assisted families in 9,196 eviction cases last year, and 88% of represented families who wanted to stay in their homes were able to do so. SB 154 / HB 103 will continue to fuel this highly effective program. Thank you to Senator Shelly Hettleman and Delegate Sandy Rosenberg for sponsoring the bill. The Governor has signed the bill.
We successfully advocated to lessen the impact of SB 46, which will speed up evictions in wrongful detainer cases. Predatory property owners often use wrongful detainer cases to evict tenants or survivors of domestic violence by claiming they are squatters, even when they’re not. As originally passed by the Senate, SB 46 furthered the extremist movement of Gov. Ron DeSantis and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) to strip residents of constitutional due process in eviction. We successfully urged legislators to restore more constitutional due process for renters in SB 46 and ensure residents have their day in court to fight back.
SB 856 will require landlords to assess and remediate mold in specified timeframes. It will also require the Maryland Department of the Environment to issue regulations for identifying and removing mold, as well as addressing the underlying causes. These regulations have the potential to have a meaningful impact on addressing hazardous mold in rental housing. The Governor has signed the bill. Thank you to Senator Shaneka Henson for sponsoring the bill.
Eviction prevention funds pay one to three months of past due rent for families facing a short-term crisis – ensuring a missed month’s rent doesn’t lead to homelessness. More than 5,000 families in Maryland are made homeless each year due to evictions. Eviction prevention funds can stop the devastating impact of homelessness on families and communities. Nevertheless, the General Assembly cut the budget for eviction prevention funds by 50% at a time when renting families need this support the most.
Currently, landlords can deny housing to prospective tenants based on a criminal record without any guardrails. The Maryland Fair Chance in Housing Act would have prohibited landlords from using criminal history to reject a tenant’s application during the applicant screening process before a “conditional offer” is made, ensuring that prospective tenants could access safe and habitable housing without facing discriminatory practices based on their criminal record. While the bill did not make it out of committee, we plan to bring it back next year. Thank you to bill sponsors Delegate Adrian Boafo and Senator Shaneka Henson, as well as the many advocates who worked on the bill, including B.U.I.L.D., Homeless Persons Representation Project, Life after Release, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and the Vera Institute of Justice.
The PJC’s Human Right to Housing team members advocating for these bills included attorneys Matt Hill, Albert Turner, Elizabeth Ashford, Samantha Gowing, and Angelea Aldana Dwyer; paralegals Carolina Paul, Omar Arar, Erin Conley, and Najá Crockett; and intern Isabelle Hartmann.
Every child should have access to an education. But some school district disciplinary practices and state policies can keep kids from succeeding in school. In this year’s legislative session, we partnered with the Maryland Coalition to Reform School Discipline on successful advocacy for a bill to integrate restorative practices into schools and defeated legislation that would have violated education rights by banning certain students from in-person school attendance. We also advocated for bills that would have improved how the Maryland State Department of Education tracks and addresses disparities in school discipline, decriminalized disruption in school, banned the use of disciplinary records in college admissions, and lowered the voting age for county Board of Education elections.
The passage of SB 68 / HB 197 creates an opportunity for schools to be designated as Restorative Practices Schools, which integrate restorative practices into the daily school operation. Restorative practices develop students’ skills for talking through disagreements and building community. The bill is designed to encourage districts to focus on robust, community-wide restorative practices that improve school climate. The Governor has signed the bill. Thank you to bill sponsors Senator Benjamin Brooks and Delegate Cheryl Pasteur.
Maryland schools’ use of exclusionary discipline does not fall evenly across student demographic groups. Our schools disproportionately suspend and expel Black and brown students even though there are no real differences in behavior from white students. And schools disproportionately discipline students with disabilities for disability-related behavior. But to fully address these and other disparities, the Maryland State Department of Education (MSDE) should change how it reports data and flags schools that need to fix discipline disproportionality problems. HB 488 / SB 714 would have required MSDE to:
Unfortunately, HB 488 / SB 714 did not make it out of committee. Thank you to the ACLU of Maryland and other members of the Coalition to Reform School Discipline for your advocacy on the bill. Thanks also to sponsors Delegate Aaron Kaufman and Senator Benjamin Brooks.
We renewed the call for legislators to pass a bill that would ensure that children can’t be arrested for so-called disruptive behaviors in school. Currently, anyone, including students, may face up to six months in jail for “willfully disturb[ing] or otherwise willfully prevent[ing] the orderly conduct of the activities, administration, or classes” of a school. Md. Code Educ. Sec. 26-101(a). Because virtually any student misbehavior can be characterized as disrupting or disturbing school, police can and do use this statute to arrest students for run-of-the-mill horseplay, talking back, or roaming the hallways. During the 2022-23 school year, 858 children were charged with disrupting school activities, making this one of the most common and racially disparate juvenile charges. Because what constitutes “disruption” is undefined and subject to implicit bias, Black children are charged with disruption at four times the rate of white children even though there are fewer Black children than white children in Maryland. Under HB 627, the criminal penalties for school disruption would no longer apply to students, so that students would no longer face arrest and other law enforcement consequences for relatively minor childhood or adolescent behaviors.
The material provisions of this bill were later incorporated into HB 1265, a bill seeking to reduce the use of reportable offenses and the school removals that come along with them. Unfortunately, HB 1265 did not pass the Senate. Thank you to sponsors Delegates Sheila Ruth, Vanessa Atterbeary, and Luke Clippinger.
As described above, school discipline disproportionately harms Black and brown K-12 students as well as students with disabilities. SB 151 sought to prevent those disparities from following a student as they apply for college, by prohibiting institutions of higher education from asking about an applicant’s disciplinary record during the admissions process. Unfortunately, the bill did not pass out of committee. Thank you to sponsor Senator Alonzo Washington.
HB 52 would have lowered the age to vote for members of an elected county board of education to 16, empowering young people to have a meaningful voice in decisions that affect their education and futures. Students aged 16 and 17 experience the effects of policies that school boards set, from curriculum choices and extracurricular funding to decisions about mental health resources and school safety protocols. Studies also show that they possess the cognitive ability to make informed decisions comparable to older voters. Allowing these students to vote in school board elections would recognize their firsthand perspective and acknowledge their stake in these outcomes. The bill did not make it out of committee. Thank you to sponsor Delegate Joe Vogel.
Every child deserves a classroom, not just a screen. But several bills in the General Assembly would have violated parents’ and children’s rights to a quality education. We advocated against HB 68 and HB 137, which were blanket bans on in-person school attendance for students charged with or under investigation for a crime of violence. These bills would have failed to make schools and communities safer, violated due process rights, put students at academic risk, and disproportionately harmed Black students and students with disabilities. Both bills died in committee.
We also opposed SB 78, which would have banned children convicted of certain sex offenses from in-person school attendance and expanded the offenses that require kids to register as a juvenile sex offender. Maryland law already provides robust safeguards to address school safety concerns while ensuring that children with disabilities are not unfairly and illegally deprived of their educational opportunities. SB 78 would have been a step backwards, having detrimental impacts on children, violating students’ due process rights, and running afoul of the rights of students with disabilities under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and the Americans with Disabilities Act. Lack of in-person school attendance can lead to the isolation of children, depriving them of crucial social interactions, support services, and academic progress. This isolation increases the risk of mental health concerns, hinders their overall development, and creates a stigma for the child regarding their inability to attend in-person school. Excluding children with disabilities from in-person schooling without individualized consideration of their needs and circumstances can have long-lasting detrimental effects on their educational outcomes, social integration, and overall well-being. This bill died in committee.
In addition, we defeated ten harmful bills on the topic of reportable offenses, designed to increase punishments for children accused of crimes off school grounds.
The PJC’s Education Stability team members advocating for these bills included attorneys Levi Bradford and Ingrid Löfgren and paralegal Kelsey Carlson.
