Gov. Josh Shapiro signs Paul Miller Jr.’s law, which bans the use of handheld interactive devices such as smartphones while driving, on July 11, 2024. (Captial-Star/Peter Hall)
Gov. Josh Shapiro signed more than 150 new laws last year and some of them are now taking effect or will in the first few months of the new year.
Many are adjustments to the clockwork of state and local government, unlikely to be noticed by the average resident. Others, their authors hope, will improve the health, safety and fairness of day-to-day life in Pennsylvania.
Put down the phone and drive
As technology changes the way we get around, Pennsylvania’s vehicle laws have been slow to catch up compared with other states.
In June, Shapiro signed Paul Miller Jr.’s law, which makes using a smartphone or other mobile devices while driving a ticketable offense. The law is named after a 21-year-old Lackawanna County man killed when a distracted truck driver slammed into his car in 2010. His parents, Eileen Miller and Paul Miller Sr., pushed state lawmakers to pass the law for nearly 12 years.
Pennsylvania passed a ban on texting while driving in 2011, but that failed to anticipate the explosion in smartphone use already underway at the time. As a result, police could not ticket drivers for surfing the internet or even watching movies on their smartphones behind the wheel.
Paul Miller Jr.’s law makes it a primary offense to use an interactive mobile device while driving, meaning that police don’t need any other reason to stop a vehicle. For that reason, Pennsylvania’s Black Legislative Caucus insisted on accountability provisions being part of the new law.
The law, which is the 29th such measure in the nation, also requires state police and municipal police in towns of 5,000 people or more to gather data on the race, ethnicity, gender and age of a driver and other details during a traffic stop. The data will allow officials to monitor whether the distracted driving law has an effect on the number of pretextual traffic stops based on the skin color or ethnicity of the driver.
The law takes effect on June 5, 2025, but for the first year, police will issue only warnings. After that, a violation will carry a $50 fine plus court costs and fees. It also allows a person convicted of homicide by vehicle while using a mobile device to be sentenced to an additional five years in prison.
Electric vehicles owner pay their share
Pennsylvania gets nearly three-quarters of its highway maintenance funding from state and federal fuel taxes. But with electric vehicles becoming more popular (and internal combustion engine vehicles becoming more efficient) revenue generated from the taxes is on the decline.
This April, electric vehicle owners will begin paying an additional registration fee to help pay for wear and tear on Pennsylvania roads. It will replace the alternative fuels tax, which is essentially an honor system for electric vehicle users to pay a mileage tax and is poorly enforced.
EV owners will pay a $200 fee when registering or renewing their registration this year. The fee would increase to $250 in 2026 and then increase based on the consumer price index in 2027 and subsequent years. Owners of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, which use gasoline and electricity, will pay 25% of the electric vehicle fee.
Pennsylvania joins at least 39 other states that charge a fee or tax on electric vehicles. When the fee takes effect, it will be the second highest in the nation after Texas. Pennsylvania’s EV fee legislation faced opposition when it was initially introduced with a $285 fee.
Even when it was reduced to $250, environmentalists including state Rep. Greg Vitali (D-Delaware) who is chairperson of the Environmental and Natural Resource Protection Committee, said it could slow adoption of EVs, which are seen as key to reducing carbon emissions.
Fighting lawlessness on the highways
Car culture has long been a mainstay of American society, but in recent years, street racing and car meets have spun out of control, sometimes with violent and deadly results.
In spring 2023, state troopers shot and killed an 18-year-old man who police said struck troopers as they responded to a street race that shut down I-95 in Philadelphia. Last fall, at least 10 people were arrested and a police officer was injured after a series of car meets in Philadelphia where drivers blocked traffic to do donuts and set off fireworks in the streets.
Shapiro in October signed the “Putting the Brakes on Street Racing” Act, which makes “drifting” punishable by a $500 fine for a first offense and a $2,000 fine and six-month impoundment of a vehicle for subsequent offenses.
The law defines drifting as “The act of steering a vehicle in a turn in an attempt to make the rear wheel or wheels of the vehicle lose traction and create a controlled or uncontrolled skid sideways.” Drifting is a racing technique popularized in Japanese car culture and through films such as “The Fast and the Furious” series. It’s often practiced at illegal car meets.
The law will take effect in September.
Shapiro also signed Act 150, which outlaws the use, sale or possession of license plate flipping devices. As seen on fictional spy James Bond’s Aston Martin, license plate flippers are devices that allow motorists to conceal their plate numbers with the flick of a switch.
With the law’s passage, Pennsylvania joins a growing number of states to explicitly outlaw license plate flippers, which sponsors said can prevent vehicles from being identified to avoid tolls and tickets or for more nefarious reasons.
Violations carry a $2,000 fine and the law takes effect Jan. 18.
Expanding health care access
The first law Shapiro signed upon taking office in 2023 requires health insurance to cover the costs of preventative screening for breast, ovarian, prostate and other cancers. In 2024, he signed two more that will improve health care access by mandating insurance coverage for genetic testing and telemedicine
Biomarker testing is an evolving area of medicine in which a patient’s genetic profile is used to allow doctors to identify the most effective treatments for cancer, multiple sclerosis, heart disease, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease.
Targeted treatment guided by biomarker testing results in fewer side effects, better outcomes and reduced costs for patients fighting chronic diseases, according to the American Cancer Society. Insurance providers have been slow to recognize the benefits, leaving patients with a choice of paying out of pocket or undergoing treatment without the testing.
“Many people of color, individuals with lower incomes and rural communities have been left behind from the benefits of biomarker-informed care,” the ACS said in a statement this month.
Act 39 took effect Jan. 1 and applies to both Medicaid and private and employer provided insurance plans.
During the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns, many health care providers turned to telemedicine using video calls to avoid potential spread of the virus. Act 42 clarifies that insurance providers must cover telemedicine visits and may not exclude treatment solely because it is provided through telemedicine. The law took effect in October.
Speech therapy
Rep. Brandon Markosek (D-Allegheny) enlisted former Charlotte Bobcats star Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, to highlight the need to improve access to speech therapy for children.
Marksek overcame a stutter as a child with the help of a speech therapist that his parents’ health insurance paid for. But Kidd-Gilchrist suffered taunts and isolation by his peers because of his stutter, a condition that he didn’t receive therapy for until he was an adult.
Now retired from the NBA, Kidd-Gilchrist has made improving access to speech therapy his cause. Shapiro signed Markosek’s legislation to require health insurance to cover speech therapy for stuttering in October. The law took effect Dec. 16.
First responders
Since the 1990s, Pennsylvania courts have barred first responders from receiving workers’ compensation while recovering from post-traumatic stress disorder.
In October, Shapiro signed a law clarifying that police officers, firefighters, emergency medical service providers and other first responders don’t need to show that a post-traumatic stress injury was the result of abnormal working conditions.
The bill’s prime sponsor (D-Delaware), said her father, who died by suicide in 2003, told her of the chaotic and traumatic scenes he worked as a Philadelphia firefighter. She said in May before the bill passed the House that she can never know whether workers’ compensation for her father would have saved his life, but she knows that it will save someone else.
O’Mara said the legislation corrects a wrong for first responders in the state, while also providing protections for municipalities and employers. The new law takes effect Oct. 19, 2025, a year after Shapiro signed it.
Lawmakers also updated the workers’ compensation law to allow claimants to receive their benefits by direct deposit, which is how 95% of workers receive their compensation. Since the law took effect Dec. 29, workers’ compensation carriers and self-insured employers are now permitted to pay benefits by direct deposit but will not be required to offer the option until October.