State lawmakers from both parties agreed today that a US congressional effort to block enforcement of state AI laws for a decade amounts to ill-advised federal overreach, echoing concerns raised in a new letter from more than 250 state lawmakers.
State lawmakers from both parties agreed today that a US congressional effort to block enforcement of state AI laws for a decade amounts to ill-advised federal overreach, echoing concerns raised in a new letter from more than 250 state lawmakers. Michelle Lopes Maldonado of the Virginia House of Delegates, a Democrat, warned during a panel discussion in Washington* that the US House went down a “dangerous path” with the proposed moratorium (see here), tucked into a budget bill aimed at advancing President Donald Trump’s economic agenda.
Maldonado also signed on to a letter sent today to Congress (see here), in which lawmakers from all 50 states warn the measure “threatens to halt a broad array of laws and restrict policymakers from responding to emerging issues.”
Trump’s so-called Big Beautiful Bill is now before the Senate, where it is expected to face close scrutiny in the coming weeks. Meanwhile, states across the country — including Virginia, Texas and Utah, represented on today’s panel — are taking their own steps to regulate AI.
“I don’t think it’s an either/or, or a binary choice,” Maldonado told the audience in DC. “I think it’s all of us working together in collaboration. And I think state and local folks have already been doing this, and it’s time for the feds to join us, not to exclude us.”
Maldonado sponsored Virginia’s HB 2094, a bill aimed at regulating high-risk artificial intelligence systems. The legislation passed the state’s legislature in February, only to be vetoed by Republican Governor Glen Youngkin, who said it would hurt AI startups in the state (see here).
In her remarks today, Maldonado raised the possibility that blocking enforcement of state laws could run afoul of the Tenth Amendment, which enshrines state powers — a concern that resonated with the Republicans on the panel: Texas State Representative Giovani Capriglione and Utah State Senator Kirk Cullimore.
Congress’s proposed moratorium could block Texas laws aimed at regulating deepfakes, as well as AI applications in healthcare and autonomous vehicles, Capriglione said, calling the proposal “just too big of a hammer to wield.”
Congress is “not at the same time coming up with a solution,” Capriglione continued. Therefore, they are risking leaving “hundreds of millions of Americans with no protections - not from AI, but from people using AI for bad things.”
Before state lawmakers took the stage in DC today, panel attendees heard a video address from US Representative Jay Obernolte, a California Republican. Obernolte has defended the moratorium proposal as a pause that will allow Congress to come up with its own AI regulatory framework (see here).
Though he did not reference the moratorium today, he touted last year’s bipartisan report from the US House Task Force on Artificial Intelligence (see here).
“It’s our hope that these recommendations will form a to-do list for future Congresses, starting with this Congress, the 119th, in creating a suitable regulatory framework for AI,” Obernolte said.
In the meantime, “no regulation is not good for business,” Cullimore of Utah said during the state lawmaker panel.
Utah was the first US state to enact legislation governing the private sector’s use of AI, back in March of 2024 (see here). Utah's Artificial Intelligence Policy Act, which took effect in May 2024, clarified that if an AI product harms someone, the company is responsible and can’t blame computer error to avoid liability.
The legislation also created a state Office of Artificial Intelligence Policy, which enters agreements with companies to test out AI applications with a temporary reprieve from existing regulation. A few companies have already applied, according to Cullimore.
The imposition of a moratorium on state AI laws would only bring ambiguity and confusion, Cullimore said, predicting that judges will likely have differing interpretations of how it applies to any given state law.
“That’s going to happen within each state, let alone nationally,” he said.
*The USA Artificial Intelligence Summit 2025, Washington, DC, June 3, 2025.
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