Maryland Gov. Wes Moore signed dozens of bills into law in Annapolis, including one that eliminates the practice of automatically charging juveniles as adults in a wide category of crimes.
Under the , teenagers younger than 18 can still be charged as adults in cases of first-degree murder and rape.
At the bill-signing ceremony Tuesday, Maryland General Assembly Senate President Bill Ferguson said, “Here in Maryland, we charge more children as adults than every other state, other than Alabama. This bill will change that.”
Ferguson said in some instances, Maryland charged 14-year-olds as adults: “For cases, that almost always, almost always, ended back into the juvenile court anyway.”
Ferguson said the legislation will keep cases “in the right court from the start, which actually, and by the data, makes us safer and is better for those young people.”
While the bill was celebrated at the signing at the Maryland State House, Ivan Bates, the president of the Maryland State’s Attorneys Association, wrote in a statement, “violent juvenile crime continues to grow out of control because the Department of Juvenile Services is ill-equipped to handle these young, violent repeat offenders.”
Bates, who testified in opposition to the bill, added, “sending these violent offenders back to the juvenile system and giving them a timeout is not the answer to such egregiously violent crimes.”
Gov. Moore touted the bill, telling Â鶹¹ÙÍø in an interview that while crime is down among most other categories, juvenile crime cases are often clogging the system.
“On average, that process takes about four months, and in some cases, it’ll take much longer. that delay does matter because it means that accountability comes too late for that young person; it means the services come too late to that young person, and it means that we miss a critical window to change behavior and actually improve outcomes,” he said.
Moore said by automatically charging minors as adults does not give the state the opportunity to get them “the services and supports that they need, and the vast majority of cases just to kick down a juvenile court anyway.”
Immigration and travel laws
One of the others bills signed into law by the governor puts additional protections in place for people who It stems from the 2024 deaths of a Bowie couple that died during extreme heat while performing the Hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia.
The family of Alhaji Alieu Dausy and Haja Isatu Wurie said once they were in the Middle Eastern country, they received messages saying the travel agency they booked the trip through did not provide proper documents, preparation, food, water or transportation. They were forced to walk for two hours and were among the 1,300 people who died in the extreme heat.
Gov. Moore told Â鶹¹ÙÍø that while the bill “was inspired by a tragedy,” it will benefit thousands of other Maryland travelers.
“It requires all sellers of travel to register annually with the Department of Labor; it requires that they prove that they hold at least $1 million in professional liability insurance before accepting any payments; and it also makes sure that it establishes the sellers of travel services registry fund, because what that will do is that will help empower the state to aggressively enforce safety standards and ensure that every Marylander can know that the agency that they’re booking with is in good standing,” he said.
Other bills signed into law included the “.” The law requires school systems to create “bell-to-bell” phone policies at all elementary, middle and high schools by the 2027-2028 school year.
Moore, however, did not sign two important immigration-based bills — the Community Trust Act and the Data Privacy Act — but will
“Maryland will always work with the federal government when that coordination makes our people safer, but we are not going to let untrained, unqualified and unaccountable ICE agents just deputize our well-trained local law enforcement officers to do immigration work,” he told Â鶹¹ÙÍø.
Moore said the state plans to work with local law enforcement departments to create task forces to handle “the most violent offenders … and I don’t care about their immigration status.”
“Local law enforcement does critical work in their communities to keep us safe, and this legislation ensures they can focus on doing that job and not necessarily ICE’s,” he said. “We’re not going to allow them to deputize our local law enforcement agencies in order to do immigration work.”
Also, a that was passed is designed to add to the state’s housing stock by barring local jurisdictions form collecting development impact fees or excise taxes on residential projects until after construction is finished. The intent is to ease any upfront barriers to building more new homes.
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