VA House Bill 67 (prefiled)

And just when you thought the Virginia legislature couldn’t outdo itself with its previous anti-freedom bills, fresh from the same party that brought you the original idea of sanctuary cities and refusing to let local police cooperate with federal laws come House Bill 67.

This gem fires

any public safety employee who, in concert with two or more other such employees, for the purpose of obstructing, impeding or suspending any activity or operation of his employing agency or any other governmental agency, strikes or willfully refuses to perform the duties of his employment

So, if three cops get together and say they won’t enforce an infringement on your rights, they’re all fired. Oh, and they can’t be employed by another agency for a minimum of a year. As I said before, politicians seriously lack a sense of irony. They do, however, seem to think this might keep any LEOs (especially the State Police) in line with their plan.

As with earlier proposed legislation, this is a modification of a law on the books. What’s odd to me is that right now it says

Any employee of the Commonwealth, or of any county, city, town or other political subdivision thereof, or of any agency of any one of them…

So, one would assume this would cover law enforcement officers already, but now they are exempting every other employee while restricting it to only LEOs. Doesn’t that seem a bit weird to you?

Now, an interesting point here is that the definition that they cite in VA Code 9.1-500 exempts Sheriffs and Sheriffs’ Departments. I have to assume it’s because Sheriffs are elected officials, not appointed bureaucrats like the police are, but I’m not a lawyer, so I honestly can’t say for sure. And realistically, a Sheriff could still hire a fired police officer if they wanted.

So once again, the Democrats are posturing hard, yet they don’t really have a way to enforce their threats. Their position is at the same time extremely weak and escalating. This is going to be an interesting session come January…