WV HB 2431: Fourth Amendment Restoration Act

West Virginia legislature · 2025 Regular · Del. Anders, Del. White, Del. Coop-Gonzalez et al.

Status as of 2025-02-17

In committee

Last action: H To House Judiciary.

AI police reports and criminal-justice disclosure

West Virginia HB 2431 would prohibit law-enforcement officers and political-subdivision officials from using specified surveillance and artificial-intelligence technologies, including facial recognition and predictive policing algorithms. It also provides a private cause of action for violations. The House referred it to Judiciary on February 17, 2025.

Operative sections

W. Va. Code §15-17-3: prohibits law-enforcement and political-subdivision officials from using specified surveillance and AI technologies.
W. Va. Code §15-17-3: listed technologies include facial recognition and predictive policing algorithms.
W. Va. Code §15-17-5: creates a private cause of action for violations of the technology prohibitions.

Text

§15-17-3. Prohibition against unreasonable surveillance and artificial intelligence technologies. Use of the following surveillance technologies by any law-enforcement officer or political subdivision official is prohibited: ... Facial recognition; ... Predictive policing algorithms; ... §15-17-5. Private cause of action. Any person whose rights have been violated by a law-enforcement officer or political subdivision official's use of any of the technologies prohibited by §15-17-3 shall have a private cause of action.

Verbatim operative text; legislative text is a government edict and public domain. Full text · History

What already applies in West Virginia

The bill sits alongside rules courts and regulators have already issued, and decisions courts have already handed down, in the same jurisdiction — from the regulation tracker and the court-decisions corpus.

Rules and guidance in force

JIC Advisory Opinion 2023-22 (judicial use of artificial intelligence)WV Judicial Investigation Commission
Answering an inquiry about judges' use of AI, the West Virginia Judicial Investigation Commission applied Code of Judicial Conduct Rules 1.2, 2.1, 2.2, 2.4(B), 2.5(A) and 2.7 and concluded that a judge may use AI for research but not to decide a case's outcome, and that drafting opinions or orders with AI demands extreme caution.
Legal Ethics Opinion 24-01: Artificial IntelligenceWV Lawyer Disciplinary Board
LEI 24-01 holds that nothing in the West Virginia Rules of Professional Conduct per se prohibits AI use in law practice. It distinguishes non-generative from generative AI, maps the main legal use cases, and requires lawyers to exercise independent judgment, communicate with clients, maintain confidentiality, keep fees reasonable, comply with advertising rules and supervise AI-assisted work.

Legislature page: wvlegislature.gov
Text: wvlegislature.gov
Read: 2026-09-07 · primary document read
Found via: state legislature keyword search
Notes: Included as criminal-law-enforcement AI/facial-recognition lane; it does not regulate police-report drafting.

Status and last action are as shown on the legislature's page on the read date; bills move. The lane coding is SafeLegalAI's reading of the operative sections, not an interpretation of what the law requires. This record summarises a public court document or official publication and reports what it says; SafeLegalAI makes no findings of its own. Individuals and organisations are named only as they appear in that public record. Anyone named may send a right of reply, correction or contextual update (for example an appeal, vacatur or later disposition) via /report; we add a dated note where appropriate. Reply or correct this record.

compiled by the Cognesio LLP editorial teammethodas of 2026-09-07v0.1.3coding CC BY 4.0JSON Hugging Face GitHub