Presidential election years aren’t typically big years for radical new state laws — legislators usually try to avoid promoting bills that will make their party look out of touch.

But some blue state lawmakers just couldn’t help themselves in 2024.

Over the last year, blue state Democrats made it easier to inject hard drugs in public and harder for law-abiding citizens to buy guns legally. They passed laws forbidding local governments from requiring voters to show IDs at the polls and barring school officials from alerting parents if their children show symptoms of a serious mental illness.

They also made it easier to legally commit suicide, protected the dignity of criminals (err, ahem, justice impacted individuals), and for reasons that aren’t exactly clear, prohibited people from cooking and consuming nuisance beaver meat.

The following are some of the most controversial blue state laws approved in 2024. Several of them are already in effect, and some go into effect in 2025.

California Bars School Officials from Alerting Parents about Gender Dysphoria

In California, school officials aren’t allowed to take students on field trips or administer Tylenol or other over-the-counter medications without parental approval. School leaders must also notify parents of any pesticides used on campus, according to state code.

But starting in January, California school officials will be legally barred from alerting parents if their children show symptoms of gender dysphoria, including if their kids ask to be identified by a new name or pronouns or start using the restrooms of the opposite sex.

In July, Governor Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 1955, also known as the Support Academic Futures and Educators for Today’s Youth Act, making the Golden State the first in the nation to prohibit what supporters call “forced outings” in schools.

The law was passed after about a dozen school districts supported policies requiring teachers to inform parents if their kids show evidence of gender dysphoria. A Newsom spokesman claimed the law “protects the child-parent relationship by preventing politicians and school staff from inappropriately intervening in family matters and attempting to control if, when, and how families have deeply personal conversations.”

Opponents of the law say it violates parents’ constitutional rights to make decisions involving their child’s physical, mental, and emotional well-being.

“School officials do not have the right to keep secrets from parents, but parents do have a constitutional right to know what their minor children are doing at school,” said a lawyer with the conservative Liberty Justice Center, which is challenging the law in court.

Writing on X, Elon Musk called the law “the final straw” in his decision to move his SpaceX headquarters from California to Texas.

California Takes Aim at Local Voter ID Law

In March, residents of Huntington Beach, Calif., gave the thumbs up to a ballot measure to revise the beachside city’s election processes, including allowing elections officials to require voters to show identification before casting ballots in municipal elections.

This, being in California, could not stand.

The state filed suit in April, claiming the voter ID requirement is unlawful. In September, Newsom signed Senate Bill 1174, an effort to clear up ambiguity in state law by explicitly prohibiting local governing bodies that oversee elections from requiring ID to vote.  According to the state, requiring IDs “disproportionately burdens low-income voters, voters of color, young or elderly voters, and people with disabilities.”

Musk was also displeased with the new anti-ID law. “They just made PREVENTING voter fraud against the law,” he wrote on X. “The Joker is in charge.”

In November, an Orange County judge granted Huntington Beach’s motion to have the state’s legal case dismissed, a ruling the city’s attorney called a “black eye for the state of California.”  The state’s progressive attorney general Rob Bonta has vowed to appeal.

Illinois Criminals Are Now ‘Justice Impacted Individuals’

Illinois Democrats took a stand this year to protect the dignity of one special interest group whose public image could use a little blue-state love: criminals.

As part of House Bill 4409, which governor J. B. Pritzker signed in August, a person convicted of a crime who participates in an adult rehabilitation program will no longer be officially referred to as an “offender,” but rather as a “justice impacted individual.”

The terminology change was ridiculed on social media and was blasted by Illinois Republicans. The Chicago Tribune editorial board called the new terminology “gift-wrapped-for-Republicans language,” “Orwellian,” and “gobbledygook,” noting that “justice impacted individual” sounds more like a description of a crime victim than an offender.

“In the minds of Republicans, and plenty of regular old Illinois Democrats, this was yet another example of the state going soft on crime by expressing a reluctance even to call a criminal a criminal,” the editorial read. “Add that to Cook County’s now infamous reluctance to prosecute many relatively minor crimes and it feels like the state is suggesting that offenders can offend with impunity.”

State representative Kelly Cassidy, a co-sponsor of the bill, accused critics of fearmongering and insulting everyone’s intelligence by focusing on “semantics.”

Colorado Halves Waiting Period for Life-Ending Drugs

Colorado Democrats made it easier for people with terminal illnesses to commit suicide.

Senate Bill 24-68, which governor Jared Polis signed into law in June, shortens the waiting period for patients to get life-ending drugs from 15 days to seven, and allows some non-doctors to prescribe the drugs. The waiting period can be reduced to as little as 48 hours in cases where the patient isn’t expected to live for a week.

Lawmakers did amend the legislation to reinstate a Colorado residency requirement so as not to encourage “death tourism” to the state, according to news reports.

Critics of loosening the rules say that most patients who choose physician-assisted suicide don’t do so because of a fear of pain or actual pain, but for reasons including depression and not wanting to be a burden on their families.

“Being dependent does not deprive a person of their value and dignity.  However, that is exactly the message that is frequently portrayed by [physician-assisted suicide] advocates and the compliant media,” Dr. Thomas Perille, president of Democrats for Life of Colorado, wrote in the Colorado Sun. “Equating disabilities and dependency with value and dignity quickly becomes a message that reverberates in vulnerable Coloradans.”

Vermont Approves Injection Site for Deadly Drugs

Vermont Democrats jumped on the so-called “safe injection site” bandwagon, overriding a veto from the state’s Republican governor to okay a location for illegal-drug users to shoot up fentanyl and other deadly poisons with the legislature’s approval.

With House Bill 72, Democrats established the framework for a pilot “overdose prevention center” in Burlington, where addicts will be allowed to consume drugs under the supervision of trained staff. The drug-injection center will be funded by $1.1 million in settlements with pharmaceutical companies.

Supporters, including the ACLU and the far-left Drug Policy Alliance, say the drug-injection center will be a harm-reduction tool aimed at saving the lives of people who overdose. Governor Phil Scott called it a “costly experiment” that diverts money from “proven prevention, treatment, and recovery strategies.” He vetoed the bill, but Democrats rounded up the votes to override the veto; it was one of a record six vetoes they overrode in one day.

Republican state representative Eric Maguire, a drug counselor, said lawmakers are “literally throwing people over the ravine and expecting they will have a safe landing.”

Critics say drug-injection sites have a poor record of moving addicts into treatment, enable drug-users to continue abusing narcotics, and attract crime and disorder. Rather than save lives, they say, drug-injection sites merely delay deaths from drugs.

Oregon Sleight-of-Hand Forces Homecare Workers to Pay SEIU Dues

Supporters of Oregon’s Homecare Modernization Act framed it as an effort to support consumers while fixing human resources issues that have long plagued homecare workers.

But there was another reason that House Bill 4129 was such a priority for Democrats and their Service Employees International Union allies: It was a legislative effort to bypass a Supreme Court ruling to again require home-health workers to pay union dues.

In 2014, in Harris v. Quinn, the Supreme Court ruled that Medicaid-paid caregivers who are vendors of the state but employed by their clients can’t be forced to pay SEIU dues. Since then, 30 to 40 percent of Oregon’s home care workers have decided against paying SEIU 503 dues, according to the Washington-based Freedom Foundation think tank.

As part of the Homecare Modernization Act, the state will now contract with private agencies to take over some administrative aspects of Oregon’s in-home care program and to be the recognized employer of caregivers, according to the Freedom Foundation. The result: home care providers will be outside the protections of the Harris ruling.

State representative Anna Scharf said the bill creates “a legal workaround for one of the state’s largest unions—the SEIU—and can once again force home healthcare workers to join unions and pay dues.”

“The idea that the state would work hand in glove with the union to deceive these people back into union membership is as dishonest as it is disgusting,” said Jason Dudash, a leader with the Freedom Foundation.

The legislation is strikingly similar to a bill in neighboring Washington that forced homecare workers in that blue state to again pay SEIU dues in 2018.

Washington State Says ‘No’ to Gun Shop Employees Under 21

Another year, another slate of Washington State laws aimed at making it harder for law-abiding residents to legally purchase and carry guns.

On the heels of passing a so-called “assault weapons” ban in 2023, Washington Democrats pushed a slew of anti-gun bills in 2024 that were signed by Governor Jay Inslee.

One bill imposes new operating requirements on licensed firearms dealers and gun shops, including barring them from employing workers under age 21 and making all employees subject to annual background checks. Gun shops must also increase security measures, including installing: bars on their windows, new alarm systems, and 24-hour video surveillance that must be kept for at least 90 days.

One shop owner told the Spokesman-Review newspaper that the new laws could lead legal gun dealers to leave the state, calling licensed dealers “the number one line of defense against illegally trafficked firearms.”

Lawmakers also added libraries, transit facilities, zoos, and aquariums to the growing list of locations where gun owners cannot openly carry weapons.

Next up for Washington Democrats: a law requiring a permit to buy a gun.

Minnesota Dems Chew on Beaver Meat Ban

In 2023, Minnesota Democrats took advantage of holding a rare trifecta in state government — control of the governorship and both houses of the legislature — and got busy trying to turn their state into a frozen progressive paradise.

In 2024, Minnesota Democrats got busy with a decidedly less significant and more perplexing fight: curbing the consumption of nuisance beaver meat.

For reasons that are not yet clear, Twin Cities Democrats added a provision to state statutes barring people who kill nuisance beavers on their property from then eating the dead rodents, according to a report in the Minnesota Star Tribune.

A leader with the state’s natural resources department told the paper he hasn’t received a solid answer about the law’s purpose. A health department official similarly said no lawmakers reached out for her agency’s advice (for what it’s worth, beavers do carry a bacteria that can make people sick, but the real danger is in handling an infected carcass).

“What are we talking about? We’re talking about the legalities of eating beaver. That’s just ridiculous,” Republican state senator Nathan Wesenberg said during floor debate.

“I eat beaver. It’s fine,” he said. “No one is going to get in trouble for doing it.”

Reprinted with permission from the National Review by Ryan Mills.

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AMAC or AMAC Action.