This Act removes the requirement that applicants for a marriage license state their race as part of the application process. Delaware is one of a small number of states that currently requires this information. In October 2019, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia ruled that requiring marriage license applicants to provide their race violates the United States Constitution. In Delaware, the Clerks of the Peace, who are the points of data collection, have expressed support for this Act, as has the Office of Vital Statistics in the Department of Health and Social Services. The National Center for Health Statistics ("NCHS") has not requested detailed information from states regarding marriage and divorce since 1996. NCHS only requires states to provide the total number of marriages that occur each month.
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This Act creates the crime of Aggravated Strangulation. A person is guilty of Aggravated Strangulation if the person is a law-enforcement officer, and while acting within the person’s official capacity as a law-enforcement officer, knowingly or intentionally uses a chokehold on another person. Under this Act, a chokehold is only justifiable when the person reasonably believes deadly force is warranted in order to protect the life of a civilian or law-enforcement officer. Aggravated Strangulation is a Class D felony unless the law-enforcement officer using a chokehold causes serious physical injury or death to another person thereby elevating the crime to a Class C felony. This Act also makes clear that if a person is charged under this section, such a charge shall not preclude or limit the State or any other prosecuting agency from bringing other criminal charges against the person.
Presently, a legal process does not exist for a Delaware hospital to seek the appointment of a guardian for a non-acute patient who has been a patient at the hospital for an extended period, after having been abandoned by family. This bill authorizes a hospital to petition for a court-appointed guardian for such a patient after providing two notices to the patient, the patient's surrogate, or the patient's family if there is no surrogate, of the need to seek a guardian for the patient.
This Act requires the Department of Education to establish and implement a curriculum on the Holocaust and genocide for students in grades 6 through 12. Teaching the lessons learned from the Holocaust and other genocides helps cultivate the spirit of human resilience, courage, heroism, and tolerance. Education about the Holocaust and genocide provide a context to learn about the danger that befalls us when hatred goes unchallenged and there is indifference in the face of oppression of others. The Halina Wind Preston Holocaust Education Committee can provide guidance, academic content assistance, resources, and assistance with curricula development to deliver quality Holocaust and genocide education.
This Act ensures that the price protections for Delawareans related to price gouging put in place during the COVID-19 state of emergency do not cease immediately upon the lifting of the COVID-19 state of emergency, but instead continue for a short period of time during the COVID-19 recovery period. The COVID-19 recovery period runs until the sixty-first day following the termination of the COVID-19 state of emergency. This Act is intended to set the ceiling for what constitutes price gouging during the COVID-19 recovery period. This Act is written to give the Governor flexibility to carry out the legislative will of protecting Delawareans while not regulating price more than necessary given the market needs and conditions. If additional executive orders are issued to further ratchet down or slowly ease the transition back to normal operations, those are the protections that will be in effect during the COVID-19 recovery period. Sections 1 and 2 of this Act sunset on the sixty-first day following the termination of the COVID-19 state of emergency. Section 3 will not sunset to ensure that a violation of this Act occurring while the protections of this Act are in effect can be pursued after the expiration of this Act, the termination of the COVID-19 state of emergency, the termination of the COVID-19 recovery period, or the suspension of the protection of this Act by the Governor.
This Act brings the Division of Motor Vehicles into compliance with federal law by allowing a commercial learner permit to be issued for a period of up to 1 year. This Act also makes technical corrections to conform existing law to the standards of the Delaware Legislative Drafting Manual.
This Act brings Delaware into compliance with the federal No Human Trafficking on Our Roads Act by creating a lifetime disqualification for a commercial diver license if the individual engages in human trafficking while using a motor vehicle. This Act also makes technical corrections to conform existing law to the standards of the Delaware Legislative Drafting Manual.
This Act requires that individual, group, and State employee insurance plans cap the amount an individual must pay for insulin prescriptions at $100 a month and must include at least 1 formulation of insulin on the lowest tier of the drug formulary developed and maintained by the carrier.
This Act provides for voting by mail for the 2020 primary and general elections and special elections held under the provisions of Chapter 73 of Title 15 due to the emergency caused by COVID-19, a highly contagious virus. Voting by mail is an alternative to, and not a replacement for, in-person voting, which remains an available option to those electors not voting by absentee or mail ballot. This Act establishes procedures for voting by mail which mirror the procedures for absentee voting. The Act makes clear that, like in absentee voting, no ballots can be tabulated until Election Day. The authority to implement voting by mail stems from the Delaware Constitution. Article XVII of the Delaware Constitution mandates that in order to insure continuity of State and local governmental operations in periods of an emergency resulting from disease, the General Assembly shall have the power and immediate duty to adopt measures that may be necessary and proper for insuring the continuity of governmental operations including nonconformity with the requirements of the Constitution when in the judgment of the General Assembly to do so would be impracticable. With this Act, the General Assembly finds that due to the highly contagious nature of COVID-19, and the need to protect Delaware voters and polling workers from the virus, voting by mail is necessary and proper for insuring the continuity of governmental operations, and conformity with the constraints of Article V, § 4A would be impracticable.
Since the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution was adopted on July 9, 1868, with Delaware ratifying it in 1901, at least 15 states have added a provision to their state constitution that prohibits the denial or abridgement of equal rights under the law based on race, color, or national origin. In 2019, Delaware amended the state constitution to prohibit the denial or abridgement of equal rights under the law based on sex, but no such prohibition exists as to race, color, or national origin. This Act is the first leg of a constitutional amendment to add race, color, and national origin to the Article I, § 21 of the Delaware Constitution to explicitly declare that protection against discrimination based on race, color, and national origin is one of Delaware's fundamental rights. This Act requires a greater than majority vote for passage because Article XVI, § 1 of the Delaware Constitution requires the affirmative vote of two-thirds of the members elected to each house of the General Assembly when the General Assembly amends the Delaware Constitution.