Session Update
The 2025 General Session marked a shift for the Wyoming Legislature with the so-called “Freedom Caucus” taking on leadership positions for the first time.
Under Freedom Caucus leadership, the Legislature failed to pass a budget for the first time in decades. This means critical state programs like preschool for children with disabilities will go entirely without funding, and lawmakers were forced to haphazardly cram funding for things like wildfire recovery and cost-of-living raises for public school teachers into other bills.
More than ever, the Legislature focused on bills that addressed very few real problems, while leaving important topics that affect people’s lives daily—like affordable housing—completely unaddressed.
Topic deepdive
Healthcare
Most of the laws that passed in 2025 that affect healthcare were aimed at limiting reproductive healthcare, including abortion. A law passed that effectively shut down the state’s lone brick-and-mortar abortion provider, and another will force women seeking abortion—including victims of rape and incest—to receive an invasive transvaginal ultrasound before receiving the procedure.
As a result of the Legislature failing to pass a budget, proposals to fund maternal healthcare, mental healthcare, and rural hospitals were all canceled. A bill to limit how debt collectors can harm a person’s credit score as a result of medical debt failed to pass committee.
Education
Lawmakers attacked public K-12 education through the 2025 session. A bill passed to divert public funding away from public schools and give it instead to families to use at elitist private schools or internet schools. Legislators killed a bill that would have ensured low-income children receive school lunch during the summer.
A new law passed that allows for an unlimited number of fly-by-night charter schools to open in Wyoming. Another removed any accountability whatsoever from home schooling.
Bills were put forth to eliminate teacher certification requirements, to politicize school board races by forcing them to be partisan, and to criminalize librarians who check out “obscene” books to students.
Other
The Legislature passed a 25 percent across-the-board property tax cut that will defund local and county governments across the state. It also passed several bills aimed to make voting more difficult.
A bill to cut unemployment benefits for workers who are laid off narrowly failed. A bill banning “non-compete” agreements that will help workers passed.
A resolution that called for the transfer of ownership of federal public lands to the states was proposed but ultimately defeated. The same fate met a bill to increase the cost of energy for people who have solar panels on their homes.
