As the Wyoming Legislature adjourns, we’re taking another look at the interplay between the three branches of government. What happens with the stack of passed legislation on the governor's desk really brings those checks and balances into focus.
Chris Clements: This is the Cheyenne Roundup, a weekly look at Wyoming’s legislative session, from Wyoming Public Radio and WyoFile. I’m Chris Clements, Wyoming Public Radio's state government reporter and with me is Maggie Mullen, WyoFile's state government and politics reporter.
Maggie Mullen: Hey Chris.
CC: Hello. The Legislature adjourned Thursday afternoon.
MM: The lawmakers have left the building. And so have we. We’re recording Friday morning at 10 from our respective reporting nooks.
CC: We want to use this episode to come full circle, and revisit something we talked about at the onset of the session: The interplay between the branches of government when it comes to lawmaking.
MM: That’s been on display this week, as Gov. Mark Gordon has signed, vetoed and let bills become law without his signature.
CC: And don’t forget the judiciary.
MM: Yeah, the constitutionality of some of these measures has definitely been top of mind for Gordon, as we’ve seen in his letters explaining his decision-making on bills.
CC: Let’s start with abortion. With these bills, you really get to see the branches doing their thing. We both reported on these measures this week.
Editor’s Note: See Chris’ story here and Maggie’s story here.
MM: So far, Gordon signed one abortion bill and vetoed another. That veto was a bill to require patients seeking abortion medications to first undergo a transvaginal ultrasound and a 48-hour waiting period.
While maintaining, in his words, a pro-life stance, Gordon said he objected to the bill’s invasive nature and its lack of exceptions for victims of rape or incest. That’s because a transvaginal ultrasound means using a wand-like device and inserting it into a woman's vagina to detect a fetal heartbeat.
Gordon was also concerned, though, about the constitutionality of the bill. There’s a lawsuit in front of the state Supreme Court about Wyoming’s two near-total abortion bans passed in 2023. Gordon said passing new abortion laws before that ruling comes down invites more litigation.
CC: And in fact, it already has.
MM: Hours after Gordon signed a separate bill Thursday to enact several regulations on clinics that perform abortions, the state’s one facility to do so, Casper’s Wellspring Health Access, challenged the law in court. Wellspring aimed part of that complaint at the ultrasound regulation ahead of Gordon making a decision on it.
Speaker of the House Chip Neiman (R-Hulett), the bill's main sponsor, said the legislation was needed to keep patients safe while abortion remains legal.
CC: Just for a point of reference, the major complication rate for medication abortions is less than 1%. That’s less than vasectomies.
MM: But safety isn't Neiman's only objective.
Chip Neiman: If there’s abortion that potentially could be prevented from this and a child’s life could be saved, I guess I’d have to, you know, figure out what the downside of that is.
CC: Gordon vetoed the ultrasound bill. But the House and then the Senate voted to override it. Some Senators, like [Republican] Wendy Schuler from Evanston, voted for the bill originally, but then against the override.
Wendy Schuler: Having taught for a lot of years, I actually had a couple students in this situation … If they would have had to have gone through what we’re asking them to do right now and be retraumatized, revictimized, I would feel really bad about that.
MM: We’ve been here before. Gordon vetoed similar legislation last year, on the grounds of ongoing litigation concerning Wyoming’s two near-total abortion bans. He cited the same thing this year for the ultrasound bill.
CC: But it's interesting to me that he let the clinic regulations slide this year, given that the constitutionality of prohibiting abortion is still stuck in the courts.
MM: Another topic that’s tangled up in the three branches is school funding and how that relates to charter schools.
CC: Gordon vetoed a bill that would remove the current limit of three charter schools in the state because he said this isn’t the right moment financially. He cited a recent ruling from a Laramie County district judge, who said the state is unconstitutionally underfunding public schools. Gordon said without a plan, adding more charter schools into the mix is “premature and unconstitutional.”
MM: But then the Legislature voted to override that veto, too.
CC: This year is what’s called a “recalibration year.” Lawmakers are required to update the school funding model. It’ll be interesting to see what they do with the judge’s ruling.
MM: Speaking of complicated, let's talk about election-related bills. For starters, there were a lot of them — 45 to be exact.
Chris: So only eight of those 45 bills made it through the legislative process to the governor’s desk.
Maggie: Yep, and the first to get his signature prohibits the distribution of unsolicited absentee ballot request forms. That bill stems from some mailers former Congresswoman Liz Cheney sent to voters in 2022 that had the appearance of being absentee ballot request forms. Gordon vetoed a similar bill in 2023 due to concerns over unintended consequences.
At the time of recording, he’s vetoed one election bill. That one would have put a minimum threshold on ballots cast in certain bond elections for the proposal to be approved. Gordon cited concerns over constitutionality and ultimately, the House sided with his veto Wednesday when it voted against overriding his decision.
The rest of the bills on his desk involve voter registration, banning certain kinds of funding for elections, prohibiting ranked choice voting and moving up deadlines for forming a new political party.
CC: Before we get into the details on those bills, can you quickly and thoroughly summarize every one of the 37 bills that died?
MM: Ha, yeah. Or what if I just hit the highlights?
CC: Well, all right, I guess.
MM: Wyoming Freedom Caucus members and allies brought the lion’s share of those 45 bills. They ran the gamut, from tightening requirements for independent candidates to curtailing the use of student IDs and Medicaid and Medicare insurance cards as acceptable forms of voter identification.
Generally speaking, supporters of the more restrictive bills said they’re needed to prevent voter fraud and improve Wyoming’s elections. Worth mentioning there have been four cases of voter fraud in the last 25 years, according to the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.
Some of the most sweeping measures did not make it across the finish line. That included mirror bills to ban electronic voting equipment, including ballot tabulators. Plus one to implement a runoff election system for the state’s top five offices and our federal delegation. That would have moved the primary for those races from August to May, so pretty big change.
Other bills that died involved requiring school board candidates to list their political party affiliation and banning ballot drop boxes.
CC: Some of these election bills died because the Senate couldn’t get to them quickly enough. Majority Floor Leader Tara Nethercott (R-Cheyenne) said at a Senate press conference that she didn’t get some of those bills from their committees until Friday, Feb. 28. That was also the day that bills had to make it through second reading in their second chamber.
Of the election bills that passed, which is likely to have the biggest impact on voters when they go to cast their ballots in 2026?
MM: That would be House Bill 156.Under current regulations, Wyomingites are required to provide proof of identity when registering to vote. House Bill 156 would add proof of residency and citizenship to that process. It would also require residents to live in Wyoming for at least 30 days before casting a ballot.
Opponents of the bill have said it risks disenfranchising eligible voters, such as unhoused residents, tribal members and women staying at shelters to flee violence.
Secretary of State Chuck Gray, however, called it a landmark election integrity bill, and said it would make Wyoming the one state to require proof of citizenship to vote.
Last year, Gray proposed via an executive rulemaking process, separate from the legislative process, requiring proof of residency during voter registration. Gordon, however, rejected the rules, citing a recommendation of the Legislative Service Office and Management Council.
CC: Another area where the governor and Legislature are zigging and zagging is DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion). There’s actually a pair of bills I’ve been reporting on that offer a good example of daylight between the House and Senate, too.
The House brought a bill that bars DEI hiring practices and initiatives in government and in education, but which didn’t explicitly seek to outlaw DEI in classroom instruction. Instead, it said that no governmental entity can require instruction promoting what the bill calls “institutional discrimination.” Gordon signed this one on Tuesday.
But then the Senate also had a DEI ban. It went a step further than the House’s because it would’ve dictated what instructors could teach in the classroom. Gordon vetoed this one, saying the bill was ill defined, created legal ambiguities and risked unintended consequences.
MM: We’ve seen this a couple times, where there’s different vehicles for basically the same policy goal, and it’s a duel to see which one wins out.
CC: Right. I talked to a University of Wyoming graduate student who was worried about both of them. Dylan Croft is a Type 1 diabetic, and she’s worried that programs that aren’t federally protected that are meant to help students with disabilities are at stake.
Dylan Croft: Targeted assistance, or like, tutoring, financial aid, even. There's scholarships that are specified for diabetics and individuals with disabilities. So those could be cut potentially. I mean, we don't know exactly what this is going to look like.
CC: She says all of this is happening as places for diverse students, like the Multicultural Affairs office, are being scaled back or eliminated due to the government crackdown.
Dylan Croft: I think it's just feeling unwelcoming to some people. When I was a freshman here, I was on what's called the Spectrum Floor, which is like a queer community floor in Downey Hall. Those kinds of safe spaces are going away.
CC: Croft wasn’t sure if the Spectrum Floor went away because of these political headwinds, but it’s still one less place for diverse folks to hang out. The DEI ban goes into effect starting in July.
MM: In our last couple minutes, I want to touch on another topic that had a number of bills on it – property taxes.
CC: Yeah, the biggie bill was Senate File 69, which Gordon signed into law on Tuesday. Single-family homeowners will see the 25% cut applied to the first million of their home's fair market value.
Lawmakers in the House and Senate heavily amended this bill, as we’ve talked about. In the end, they removed money to reimburse counties and towns for the property tax revenue they’ll lose because of the new law.
MM: That backfill, as it's referred to, was a priority for the Freedom Caucus. At the same time, they also said the 25% exemption won’t be so bad for local governments since property taxes are only part of their revenue base.
Other Republican lawmakers, particularly in the Senate, took a different approach to backfill. They said it wasn’t a sustainable solution because it would lead local governments to be more dependent on state funding while also draining the state’s savings.
In the end, those lawmakers won out. And it’s now up to local governments to figure things out.
CC: I talked to Casper Mayor Ray Pacheco about that. He said the bill is shortsighted, but that he’s glad the final version was only a 25% cut, instead of 50%, as was proposed at one point. But he added it’s going to affect some city services.
Ray Pacheco: Our traditional conservative values is that we are fiscally responsible, fiscally conservative, and the idea that we have this vast amount of money to just spend into oblivion to be able to do that, I don't think it's fiduciary responsible.
CC: He says the bill will likely result in Casper losing at least a million dollars out of its $16 million savings. City staff will have to determine what services to cut or scale back in the coming month. Pacheco says there’s another issue going on regarding the bill.
Ray Pacheco: The communication between legislators and the cities and the municipalities were really no conversation at all.
MM: So at this point, with lawmakers out of the building, the ball now rests in the governor’s court.
CC: And the court’s court.
MM: The governor's basically got two weeks to make decisions on the final pile of bills on his desk. Chris, what’s left on your radar?
CC: A lot. I’ll be closely following the new abortion court case in Natrona County District Court after the bill regulating Wellspring was signed. I’ll be gathering reactions to some of these bans on where trans folks can go in the state. Plus, I’m still waiting on bill signings. And you, Maggie?
MM: Well, the session may be over but the interim is just beginning. That’s the off season when lawmakers get a whole bunch of their work done. So I’ll be paying attention to that before that too long, but I got a couple session deep dives in the works. Plus, another episode of this podcast!
Chris: Thanks for listening to the Cheyenne Roundup, your weekly look at what lawmakers are up to during the 2025 legislative session from Wyoming Public Radio and WyoFile. New episodes drop every Friday throughout the session.
Editing and producing by Tennessee Watson and Nicky Ouellet. Follow our ongoing legislative coverage at wyomingpublicmedia.org and WyoFile.com. And thanks again for listening.
