Connecticut, Virginia Lawmakers Rethink AI Legislation Approach
BOSTON -- Connecticut and Virginia are rethinking their approaches to comprehensive AI regulation in order to pass legislation that failed in 2025, Connecticut Sen. James Maroney (D) and Virginia Del. Michelle Lopes Maldonado (D) said Friday at the IAPP AI Governance conference.
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Maroney’s SB-2 failed to pass in 2025 and Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) vetoed Maldonado’s HB-2094. Legislation with AI impact assessment requirements could be difficult to pass, said Maroney, citing industry opposition faced by Colorado Sen. Robert Rodriguez (D) over his comprehensive AI law.
“I think it’s going to be difficult work going forward,” said Maroney. “That’s what we’re seeing. It’s a different environment.”
As such, he plans to focus legislative efforts on consumers' right to know, notice provisions and inventory requirements. Ultimately, the goal should be to regulate all consequential decisions involving AI technology, even if it requires a sector-specific approach, he said.
Maldonado said she agrees with what provisions legislators should focus on to get bills signed into law. “We’ve got to take another approach,” she said. “I think it would be very difficult to get those bills in their current form across the finish line.”
However, it’s inevitable that the U.S. will get to a point where “more people than not will demand to know more, to be able to make more decisions about what happens with their data,” she said. Accordingly, the regulatory approach should center around transparency and disclosure, but there should be provisions allowing consumers to opt out of certain data activity, she added.
Both Maldonado and Maroney said it would be ideal for Congress to pass a federal AI framework, but only if it establishes a floor, not a ceiling. They spoke against congressional Republicans’ attempts to pass a moratorium blocking states from enforcing AI laws for 10 years.
“To say that states should not have any input for a decade” is “dangerous,” Maldonado said. “The speed at which this technology is evolving is so incredible that even three years puts [you] at a significant deficit in terms of your ability to regulate and provide guidelines and to partner.”
Maroney noted that COPPA, enacted in 1998, is the last major privacy law Congress passed. “I don’t think we can afford to wait 25 years for a technology that is moving so quickly,” he said. “Good regulation can be pro-innovation,” he added, citing the biotechnology sector as an example of industry with balanced regulation.
The two lawmakers said industry's state patchwork argument is exaggerated. Companies comply with patchworks in every sector, said Maroney, noting Amazon’s ability to comply with varying state sales tax laws.
Maroney noted that the first iteration of SB-2 closely mirrored Colorado’s AI law. Rodriguez has tried to negotiate with industry stakeholders, but there’s a “group that just wanted nothing” in terms of regulation, Maroney said.
“Haters gonna hate,” he said. “Legislators gonna legislate.”