MD House passes juvenile justice reform; Senate passes energy bill

During the final full week of the Maryland General Assembly‘s 2026 legislative session, lawmakers are enduring marathon floor sessions as they shuffle through hundreds of bills that have yet to make it to the governor’s desk.

Before Monday, 71 bills had overcome the necessary hurdles in both chambers and are waiting for Gov. Wes Moore’s signature. But a slew of them still need to move before legislators leave Annapolis after their annual round of 90-day, rapid-fire lawmaking.

Here is a rundown of Monday’s late-afternoon House of Delegates and Senate floor sessions.

Juvenile justice reform passes in House

After years of debate, the House passed a bill Monday that would allow more cases in which children charged with criminal offenses to begin in the juvenile court system rather than being automatically heard in the adult system. Prosecutors would need to convince juvenile court judges that those cases should be moved up to the adult court.

Previous iterations of the bill have existed for more than a decade.

Under the 2026 version, 16- and 17-year-olds charged with first-degree assault, or any child 14 and up facing firearms charges would be excluded from automatic juvenile court jurisdiction.

The legislation passed out of the Senate chamber in early March on a vote of 32-12 and out of the House chamber Monday on a vote of 92-29.

The bill went unamended in the House chamber, meaning it will be sent to Moore’s desk without enduring a conference committee.

Before the final vote tally was registered, Del. Gabe Acevero, D-Montgomery, said he was in support of the bill passage but, noting that Maryland is second only to Alabama regarding the number of children it charges as adults, said the legislature needs to do more in the realm of juvenile justice reform.

“This bill is the first step … in the right direction to ensure that we are not continuing to criminalize our youth,” said Acevero. “My hope is that we will come back, and we will do more around juvenile justice to ensure that we’re not criminalizing Black and brown youth, who ultimately become over-represented in jails and prisons — not because they’re inherently criminal but because of the laws that we pass here or we fail to repeal.”

Standing in its opposition, House Minority Leader Jason Buckel, R-Allegany, said the legislature “went too far” regarding the charges that will start in juvenile court “because the activists demand it.”

“The activists would have you charge everyone in this state as a juvenile if they meet a certain racial characteristic — that is a fact,” he said. “Why would anyone care about those characteristics when you’re dealing with someone who is potentially a violent criminal? Violent. Ridiculous.”

In response, House Majority Leader David Moon, D-Montgomery, noted that children charged with crimes beyond those excepted under the bill can still enter the adult court system.

“They may still end up in adult court, but most of them do not, and this is because in Maryland, we believe children have the possibility of redemption,” said Moon. “Show us the evidence otherwise — and, unfortunately, the system does allow that and throws them back into adult court — but in Maryland, we think they have hope.”

Energy assistance passes in Senate

House and Senate lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have placed much focus this session on the skyrocketing cost of Marylanders’ utility bills in 2026. Legislation poised to provide at least a modicum of financial assistance passed out of the Senate chamber Monday afternoon on a vote of 38-4.

The Utility Reducing Energy Load Inflation for Everyday Families, or Utility RELIEF Act, is an amalgamation of House and Senate leadership priorities and pieces of the Lower Bills and Local Energy Act introduced on behalf of the Moore administration at the session’s start.

Legislation sponsored by Senate Education, Energy and the Environment Committee Chair Brian Feldman, D-Montgomery, was amended to reflect the Utility RELIEF Act in both name and policy.

The bill is multifaceted and has been significantly amended in both chambers.

As it was passed out of the House, the legislation would allocate $100 million from the state’s Strategic Energy Investment Fund for rebates on ratepayers’ utility bills and would create an annual bidding process for renewable energy sources. An additional $100 million from the investment fund would be put toward the Maryland Energy Administration and the Public Service Commission to support the bidding process.

It is poised to provide ratepayers an annual $150 via cuts to the Maryland EmPOWER program, which is intended to incentivize utility customers to save money and electricity by providing discounted energy audits, weatherization projects and appliances that are more efficient. Fees for EmPOWER show up as line items on monthly utility bills.

It would also reduce EmPOWER’s goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 30% for the next three years.

Additionally, funding under the bill would also go to the Public Service Commission’s new Limited Income Discounted Rate, which can save low-income Marylanders up to $1,400 a year.

“The bill needs to be viewed as part of a broader effort to address some of our short-term, medium and longer-term issues that we can control, here in the General Assembly,” Feldman said before the legislation was debated on the Senate floor Thursday.

The Senate maintained the cuts to EmPOWER implemented by the House chamber. It also capped the amount of money that utility companies can pull from ratepayers to compensate their company executives.

Republicans have been railing against green energy programs like EmPOWER for years, saying they don’t provide enough relief and come at the cost of utility customers. They also believe the amount of relief rolling back EmPOWER will provide isn’t enough.

At a Thursday news conference before the bill was debated, Senate Minority Leader Steve Hershey Jr., R-Upper Eastern Shore, said it was “good to see that” Democrats “have finally listened” to their calls.

“I think you’ve gotten to the moment where EmPOWER has kind of run its course,” he said.

The vast majority of Senate Republicans held their noses and voted in favor of the legislation, several of whom did so while saying that though the bill was a valiant effort, their chamber needs to do more for their constituents who are suffering financially.

“One thing I emphasize … is I look at our middle class. We have never given them relief for many of years,” Sen. Johnny Ray Salling, R-Baltimore County, said as he explained his vote. “I think we need to look and find ways where we can do that.”

Sen. Katie Fry Hester, D-Howard and Montgomery, said state lawmakers “have to be honest about what we can fix and what we can’t fix,” noting that market structures driving increasing energy costs are set at a regional level.

“When we leave here today, let’s leave proud of what we have done here, but let’s not give up the fight,” Hester said. “We need to continue to work with our neighbors across the PJM region to demand that we hold data centers to account, to pay their fair share like they said they would do, and that needs to happen at the regional level.”

Because the bill was amended in the Senate, differences between its iterations must be ironed out in a conference committee before it reaches Moore’s desk. That is likely to happen later this week.

Emergency abortion care protections in Senate

On Friday, the House passed a Senate bill that would establish under Maryland law that pregnant patients can receive emergency abortion care — a right currently guaranteed under the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act.

The bill, which would go into effect immediately upon receiving the governor’s signature, would maintain a hospital’s ability to transfer pregnant patients to other medical facilities only if it wouldn’t worsen their condition.

In February, the House passed its version of the legislation, which is slated to be debated by the Senate on Monday.

Only one version of the bill needs to pass for it to reach Moore’s desk.

This story has been updated with quotes.