WV SB 688: Responsible Use of Facial Recognition Act

West Virginia legislature · 2025 Regular · Sen. Rose, Sen. Thorne, Sen. Rucker et al.

Status as of 2025-03-04

In committee

Last action: S To Government Organization.

AI police reports and criminal-justice disclosure

West Virginia SB 688 would regulate law-enforcement use of artificial-intelligence facial-recognition and surveillance technologies. It prohibits listed uses, including facial recognition, unless a warrant authorizes use against a specific person based on probable cause, and creates a working group for model policies. It was sent to Government Organization on March 4, 2025.

Operative sections

W. Va. Code §15-17-4: law-enforcement use of listed surveillance technologies, including facial recognition, requires a warrant for a specific person based on probable cause.
W. Va. Code §15-17-5: creates a facial-recognition working group to publish a model policy for law-enforcement agencies.
W. Va. Code §15-17-5(b): model policy must specify authorized uses and safeguards for facial-recognition technology.

Text

Use of the following surveillance technologies by any law-enforcement officer or political subdivision official is prohibited for law enforcement purposes unless a warrant has been issued authorizing such use against a specific person based upon probable cause: (1) Real Time Security monitoring; (2) Multimodal vehicle recognition; (3) Facial recognition; (4) Surveillance drones; (5) License plate readers; and (6) Digital identity ecosystems. ... The working group ... shall create and make publicly available a model policy for use by law enforcement agencies.

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: archived NCSL 2025 AI legislation table
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.

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