Delaware Bills

This Act creates a Delaware Manufactured Home Owner Attorney Fund by collecting a $0.50 monthly assessment per lot from manufactured home owners who rent a lot in a community governed by Manufactured Home Owners and Community Owners Act. The fund will be administered by the Department of Justice to contract with an attorney or agency who will provide legal representation and advocacy for manufactured home owners in disputes with community owners. This Act also makes technical corrections to conform existing law to the standards of the Delaware Legislative Drafting Manual.

This act makes various edits to the existing Medical Marijuana Act, including, but not limited to: • Adding requirements for registration of a compassion center, including information about any labor peace agreement with a bona fide labor organization assuring an uninterrupted supply of medicine, and to disclose any record of previous violations, investigations, citations, administrative proceedings, or lawsuits related to any laws or regulations relating to employment, workplace safety, wages and compensation, discrimination, any other worker protections, tax, or any other relevant laws and regulation by any business owned or operated by the applicant, principal, or managerial employees. • Expands the authority of the Department to include evaluation of compassion center registration certificate renewals. • Expands considerations by the Department for an applicant of a compassion center to include the centers plan to maintain pesticide free medical marijuana, the center's employment standards, and evidence that they have no history of disciplinary action and/or investigations. • Includes in the criteria for compassion center and safety compliance facilities renewals to submit any history of disciplinary action and/or investigations. • Removes the requirement for volunteers of compassion center, or registered safety compliance facilities to undergo background checks every 5 years. • Requires a compassion center or a registered safety compliance facility to report any legal proceedings, judgments, or government investigations against them, or its owners, principals or managerial employees and to provide sufficient compensation to support the worker’s family, health and welfare, and cost of living.

In light of the Delaware Supreme Court’s decisions in Schadt v. Latchford and Lemos v. Willis, this Act amends the City of Wilmington’s Home Rule Charter to authorize Wilmington City Council to determine the following: (1) Whether and to what extent the duty to design, construct, repair, and maintain City alleys, footways, and sidewalks may be delegated to responsible parties. (2) Whether and to what extent responsible parties have the duty to remove and dispose of snow or ice from city sidewalks.

This Act prohibits a person from purchasing, selling, offering for sale, possessing with intent to sell, or importing with intent to sell ivory or rhinoceros horn, except as specified. A violation of this Act or any rule, regulation, or order adopted under this Act is a misdemeanor subject to fines, imprisonment, or both, as specified in this Act. In addition to the specified criminal penalties, this Act authorizes the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control ("the Department") to impose a civil penalty of up to $10,000 for a violation of this Act or any rule, regulation, or order adopted under this Act. This Act authorizes the Department to permit the purchase, sale, offer for sale, possession with intent to sell, or importation with intent to sell ivory or rhinoceros horn for educational or scientific purposes by a bona fide educational or scientific institution if not prohibited by federal law. This Act does not apply to ivory or rhinoceros horn that is part of a gun, knife, musical instrument, or antique, as long as the ivory or rhinoceros horn component in the item is a fixed component of a larger manufactured item and is not, in its current form, the primary source of value of the item. The requirement that a bona fide antique be at least 100 years old is not a rolling time frame, but is to be a 100 year look back from the effective date of this Act. This Act takes effect 6 months after its enactment into law.

This Act creates the crime of wrongful use of voter registration information. Delaware has no specific statute that addresses such a situation. Currently when there is a request for voter registration, the Department of Elections requires the applicant to sign a form with a sworn statement that the applicant will not use it for commercial solicitation or any other purpose not related to the electoral process. The applicant may be charged with perjury if they violate their affirmation. Nearby states Maryland, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania have stronger restrictions. This act would allow a fine that would be equal to 100% of funds received from any use of the information or $1,000, whichever is greater, and makes it a class A misdemeanor.

This Bill amends the Administrative Procedures Act extending and shortening certain time periods for parties to act and limits emergency regulations to situations affecting public health or safety. If an agency is found to have unlawfully adopted regulations, the agency shall be responsible for the complainant's reasonable fees and costs incurred in bringing such action. This Bill also specifies speaker-time allocation and what the agency is to do if more time is needed for parties to speak at public hearings. The purpose of the Bill is to simplify and expedite legal processes to review, stay, and adjudicate regulatory actions.

This Act authorizes the Department of Transportation to use automated speed enforcement (ASE) systems to enforce speed restrictions within work zones on highways. The purpose of this Act is to increase safety for construction and maintenance workers on highways.

This Act, named the Share the Care Act, permits a responsible caregiver to give permission to an individual employed by a home care agency selected by the responsible caregiver to administer medications to an adult individual who lacks decision-making capacity in the individual’s residence. Under this Act, the responsible caregiver must prepackage the medication by date and time and provide written instructions regarding the administration procedure. And, the responsible caregiver and the person employing the unlicensed assistive personnel must sign an agreement governing the administration or medication.

This concurrent resolution establishes a Task Force to investigate the cost of special education and make recommendations related to cost efficiency.

This Act prohibits the manufacture, sale, offer to sell, transfer, purchase, receipt, possession, or transport of assault weapons in Delaware, subject to certain exceptions. One exception relevant to individuals is that the Act does not prohibit the possession and transport of firearms that were lawfully possessed or fully applied for before the effective date of this Act; although for these firearms there are certain restrictions relating to their possession and transport after the effective date of this Act. This Act is based on the Firearm Safety Act of 2013 (“FSA”) passed in Maryland in the wake of the tragic slaughtering of children on December 14, 2012, at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. The FSA’s assault weapons ban was upheld as constitutional on February 21, 2017, by the full membership of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in the case of Kolbe v. Hogan, 849 F.3d 114 (4th Cir. 2017). The names Newtown, Aurora, San Bernardino, Orlando, Las Vegas, and Parkland, among others, have become synonymous with tragic killing of innocent, unsuspecting Americans of all ages and backgrounds, amidst a framework of federal and state laws that have permitted the purchase of weapons designed for the battlefield — not for our schools, our theaters, our places of worship, or our homes. Safety — both for the general public, as well as members of Delaware's law-enforcement community — is the objective of this Act, as it was for the FSA. And, as with the FSA, a primary goal of this Act is to reduce the availability of assault weapons so that when a criminal acts, he or she does so with a less dangerous weapon and less severe consequences. Relying on United States Supreme Court precedent from District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), as well as the holdings of its sister circuits, the full Fourth Circuit concluded that the assault weapons banned by the FSA are not protected by the Second Amendment. The Fourth Circuit was convinced that the banned assault weapons are among those arms that are “like” “M-16 rifles” — “weapons that are most useful in military service” — which the Heller Court singled out as being beyond the Second Amendment’s reach. The Fourth Circuit concluded that Maryland had presented extensive uncontroverted evidence demonstrating that the assault weapons outlawed by the FSA are exceptionally lethal weapons of war. The Fourth Circuit also concluded that the evidence showed the difference between the fully automatic and semiautomatic versions of military-style weapons is slight. Further evidence considered by the Fourth Circuit that motivates this Act is as follows: (1) Like their fully automatic counterparts, the banned assault weapons are firearms designed for the battlefield, for the soldier to be able to shoot a large number of rounds across a battlefield at a high rate of speed, and that their design results in a capability for lethality — more wounds, more serious, in more victims — far beyond that of other firearms in general, including other semiautomatic guns. (2) The banned assault weapons have been used disproportionately to their ownership in mass shootings and the murders of law-enforcement officers. (3) The banned assault weapons further pose a heightened risk to civilians in that rounds from assault weapons have the ability to easily penetrate most materials used in standard home construction, car doors, and similar materials, and that criminals armed with the banned assault weapons possess a “military-style advantage” in firefights with law-enforcement officers, as such weapons allow criminals to effectively engage law-enforcement officers from great distances and their rounds easily pass through the soft body armor worn by most law-enforcement officers. (4) Although self-defense is a conceivable use of the banned assault weapons, most individuals choose to keep other firearms for that purpose. (5) Prohibitions against assault weapons will promote public safety by reducing the availability of those armaments to mass shooters and other criminals, by diminishing their especial threat to law-enforcement officers, and by hindering their unintentional misuse by civilians. (6) In many situations, the semiautomatic fire of an assault weapon is more accurate and lethal than the automatic fire. Finding this evidence and these conclusions by the Fourth Circuit to be strongly persuasive of the applicable framework of constitutional rights, and firmly believing that promoting the safety of the Delaware public and Delaware law-enforcement is a paramount function of the Delaware General Assembly, Delaware legislators file this Act in the name of public safety and with adherence to core constitutional principles.

This Act prohibits a tax rate greater than 50 cents per cigar upon the sale and use of premium cigars.

This Act acknowledges that the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control has been collecting natural resource data for years without the consent of the respective property owners. This Act further prohibits the dissemination of natural resource data to any person or entity without first disclosing the date and method of collection along with obtaining the written consent of the respective property owner. In the event written consent cannot be obtained during a two year period following the effective date of this Act, the Department must expunge, without the distribution or transmission to any other person or entity any natural resource data.