Current Status - Virginia

As of September, women's rights in Virginia continue to expand, particularly in reproductive health, workplace protections, and maternal care.

Attention is increasingly focused on constitutional protections and voting representation. Virginia voters will decide in November whether to add reproductive freedom, marriage equality, and voting rights protections to the state constitution. The reproductive freedom amendment continues to face legal challenges involving the amendment process and ballot language.

Earlier this year, Virginia also expanded workplace protections by broadening coverage under the Virginia Human Rights Act, extending filing deadlines for discrimination claims, and implementing paid leave, paid sick leave, salary transparency, and other worker protections. Additional legislation strengthened maternal healthcare, expanded contraceptive access, and increased firearm restrictions for certain domestic violence offenders.

Looking ahead to the November election?
See Virginia - What to watch in 2026 for the races and policy areas that could shape the state’s future direction.

Top 5 Things to Know

Virginia voters could add reproductive freedom to the state constitution. A proposed constitutional amendment protecting abortion, contraception, and fertility care is scheduled to appear on the November ballot.
Voting rights remain an important area of change. A federal court ruling expanded voting eligibility for many Virginians with felony convictions, while voters will decide in November whether to establish automatic voting-rights restoration after release from incarceration.
Virginia has established a legal right to contraception.
A newly signed law guarantees access to birth control and protects providers, preventing state or local governments from restricting contraceptive care.
Virginia expanded maternal health protections in April. Newly signed “Momnibus” legislation increases maternal mental health screenings, expands support for high-risk pregnancies, and improves tracking of severe pregnancy complications.
Virginia expanded workplace protections. New laws broaden anti-discrimination protections, establish paid family and medical leave, require paid sick leave, and expand salary transparency requirements.

Women's Health

Virginia stands out as one of the few Southern states where abortion remains legal past the first trimester and where lawmakers have advanced long-term constitutional protections. At the same time, the political environment remains active, with reproductive rights a defining issue of recent election cycles. And unlike states that have locked protections into their constitutions or adopted shield laws, Virginia still relies on statute rather than constitutional protection—leaving its reproductive rights landscape exposed to rapid change, for now.

Reproductive Rights

Lawmakers advanced a reproductive freedom constitutional amendment in 2025. In January 2026, the Virginia Senate again advanced the amendment, placing it on the November 2026 ballot. The amendment continues to face legal challenges involving the amendment process and ballot language.
In 2026, Virginia established a legal right to contraception and approved additional insurance coverage requirements for FDA-approved contraceptives, including some over-the-counter options. Beginning in 2027, privately insured Virginians will also gain expanded no-cost contraceptive coverage, including some over-the-counter options, under the Contraceptive Equity Act.
Virginia passed nation-leading reproductive and menstrual data privacy protections, blocking law enforcement and private companies from accessing certain health data without consent.
The state has not adopted a full “shield law” to protect abortion providers in the state, but it does bar out-of-state entities from obtaining menstrual data, and it limits cooperation on certain data requests.

Healthcare Access

Virginia maintains an expanded Medicaid program, with 12-month postpartum coverage and relatively stable maternal health benefits.
Back in April, Virginia enacted a package of maternal health laws expanding mental health screenings, increasing support for high-risk pregnancies, and improving statewide tracking of severe pregnancy complications.
Rural hospital and OBGYN service reductions continue to create uneven access, especially in the south and southwest parts of the state.
Implementation of reproductive privacy laws is ongoing, and compliance questions have become a new focus in late 2025.

Workplace Rights

Virginia expanded workplace protections during the 2026 legislative session, adopting some of the broadest worker protections in the South. Lawmakers approved wide-ranging reforms affecting wages, paid leave, workplace safety, labor law enforcement, and pay transparency.

For women, the most significant changes focused on pregnancy protections, paid leave, and pay equity—areas where women are more likely to experience workplace barriers or caregiving responsibilities.

The Virginia Human Rights Act protects workers from discrimination based on pregnancy, childbirth, lactation, and related medical conditions, and employers must provide reasonable accommodations for pregnant and postpartum employees.
Virginia became the first Southern state to establish a comprehensive paid family and medical leave program. Benefits will begin in 2028, and nearly all workers will also gain access to paid sick leave beginning in 2027.
New laws require many employers to disclose salary ranges in job postings and prohibit asking applicants about their salary history, helping reduce pay disparities that have historically affected women.

Violence & Safety

Virginia continues to expand legal protections for survivors of domestic violence and communities affected by gun violence.

In June, Governor Spanberger signed legislation that broadens the state's red-flag law, strengthens safe-storage requirements, bans ghost guns, and closes the "intimate partner loophole" by extending firearm restrictions to certain people convicted of assaulting dating partners. The new law also expands who may petition a court for a Substantial Risk Order.
Survivors have access to civil protective orders and certain housing protections, including the ability to terminate leases early when fleeing violence.

Voting & Civic Participation

Virginia maintains broad voting access compared to many Southern states, but court rulings, federal-state disputes, and redistricting have kept voting rights and political representation active issues.

In July 2026, a federal court dismissed a Justice Department lawsuit seeking Virginia's complete voter-registration list and denied the federal government's request to compel the state to provide the records. The DOJ appealed the ruling, leaving the dispute over federal access to Virginia's voter data unresolved.

In May, Virginia enacted new voter-list maintenance procedures requiring additional verification safeguards before registrations can be canceled, limiting how federal citizenship databases may be used, and requiring notice to voters before removal from the rolls.

In April, voters approved a constitutional amendment that would have allowed the General Assembly to redraw Virginia's congressional districts before the 2026 election. The Virginia Supreme Court later invalidated the amendment, ruling that lawmakers had not followed the constitutional process required to place it before voters. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to intervene in May, leaving Virginia's existing congressional map in place for the 2026 midterms.

Voting rights for people with felony convictions have also changed. In August, a federal court reaffirmed that Virginia cannot automatically disenfranchise people convicted of all felonies under a federal law dating to the state's post-Civil War readmission to the Union. The ruling expands voting eligibility for many Virginians with felony convictions.

Voters will separately decide in November whether to amend the Virginia Constitution to automatically restore voting rights after a person is released from incarceration.

Education

Virginia’s education landscape continues to reflect ongoing policy conflicts over transgender student rights, book removals, and the interpretation of “sexually explicit” materials laws.

Several proposals introduced in the 2026 legislative session to further restrict gender-related policies in schools did not advance, leaving existing rules largely unchanged while signaling continued legislative focus on these issues.

An October 2025 directive ordered the Board of Health to draft statewide rules limiting transgender students’ participation in girls’ sports and access to facilities.
A late-2025 review resurfaced findings of 220 book removals across Virginia since 2020, often due to school districts misapplying a 2022 law intended for classroom instruction rather than libraries.
LGBTQ+ titles and stories about gender identity make up a disproportionate share of removed books.