Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin rejected the House of Representatives bill of 2094, a “high-risk artificial intelligence developers and deployment law.” Veto power can only be overridden by two-thirds of the House vote.
In his explanation of his veto, Governor Youngkin noted that there are already “many laws that protect and hold consumers liable on businesses related to discriminatory practices, privacy, data use, honorary libel and more.”
In conclusion, he states:
The role of government in protecting AI practices must be to enable and grow innovators to create and grow. It does not stifle progress and puts a troublesome burden on many federal business owners. The bill will harm the creation of new jobs, the appeal of new business investments, and the availability of innovative technologies in Virginia.
Virginia’s law is a similar bill to Colorado Senate Bill 24-205, which was signed into law on May 17, 2024, and came into effect on February 1, 2026. The Colorado Act was the first of its kind, but was signed by the Colorado government’s Jared Police.
In fact, just a month before the Virginia veto, the Colorado Artificial Intelligence Impact Task Force published a report identifying many issues with Colorado law, including:
Definition of exemption information for the definition of decision-making target decision system that qualifies as a “consequential decision” and documentation definition that provides developers with the deployment of event timing and triggers for impact assessment definition of “substantial factors” definition of “obligations of care” for developers and deployers
AI laws like Colorado have been implemented in many other states, with laws that form task groups to study balanced approaches to AI governance. If lawmakers are aware that rushed laws rarely recognize that there is no negligence, the latter will likely win, and for now, as pointed out by Attorney General Youngkin of California, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Oregon, there are existing state laws that prohibit discriminatory practices.
