Rep. Larry Lambert

This Act moves the date by which the Department of Education shall submit its annual report to the Domestic Violence Coordinating Council from August 1 to October 15 of each year. Moving the date to October 15 will better accommodate the data collection, quality control, and certification process utilized by the Department of Education. Schools and districts are required to enter their data by July 1 and the process of verifying the information and making any corrections necessary to certify the data is usually finished by October 1.

This Act provides protections for consumers in connection with contracts with automatic renewal provisions. Multiple states have enacted laws regulating the automatic renewals of contracts, often described as "evergreen" clauses. These state laws are aimed at protecting consumers from unknowingly entering into these types of agreements by requiring that evergreen clauses be presented in a clear and conspicuous manner and that sellers of such contracts provide notice to consumers about an upcoming renewal. This Act also requires sellers of such contracts to provide consumers with a means to cancel the contract that is at least as easy to use as the means available to sign up for the contract. It also updates the language of the enforcement provision in Subchapter IV, Chapter 27 of Title 6 of the Delaware Code. This Act is a substitute for and differs from Senate Bill No. 93 by extending the length of covered contracts from 6 months to 12 months. It also adds audio disclosure to the definition of "clearly and conspicuously" and removes the provision stating that a cancellation that is in the same medium as the medium used to enter the contract is considered "cost effective, timely, and easy to use." It further specifies that a consumer who signs up for a covered contract online must be able to cancel online. The substitute eliminates the requirement that businesses notify consumers the date at which the contract will automatically renew if not canceled and establishes a right to cure. It also adds matters subject to the jurisdiction of the Federal Communications Commission to the exempted entities. Finally, the effective date is changed to January 1, 2022.

This Act would allow importers to take orders from retailers any day including Sundays and holidays and process them for delivery.

This Act provides increased funding for kindergarten through third grade students identified as eligible for basic special education services. Currently, basic special education is provided for students in fourth through twelfth grade who are identified as eligible for basic special education and related services; there is no additional unit funding for students in kindergarten through third grade who may be eligible for basic special education services. The Act adds a designation of “K-3 Basic Special Education (basic)” and over three years reduces the number of students comprising a unit from the current 16.2 to 8.4. This Act will increase the unit count funding for K-3 Basic Special Education (basic) students by School Year 2023-2024, Fiscal Year 2024, to be consistent with the 8.4 unit of pupils currently available to students in grades 4 through 12. Sections 1 through 3 of this Act change the funding chart currently in the Code to subsections and provides for a decrease in the ratio between the number of students enrolled and the unit count for basic special education from 16.2 currently to 12.2 in Fiscal Year 2022, 10.2 in Fiscal Year 2023, and 8.4 in Fiscal Year 2024. Section 4 of this Act delays the effect of each Section until the start of each new fiscal year in the 3-year cycle over which this Act’s changes are intended to occur.

This Act adds the Delaware Combined Campaign for Justice to the 21 charitable organizations listed on the Delaware personal income tax return to which Delaware tax payers may contribute, either through paying a portion of a refund owed, or an amount in addition to taxes owed through a check off. The Delaware Combined Campaign for Justice was established in 1999 as a partnership of the Delaware State Bar Association, Community Legal Aid Society, Inc., Delaware Volunteer Legal Services and Legal Services Corporation of Delaware. The partners joined to increase the availability of civil legal services to disadvantaged people in Delaware by increasing the resources available to fund legal services.

This Act leverages technological advances to allow Family Court the flexibility to permit litigants to publish through a legal notices website established by the Court. This Act also makes technical corrections to conform existing law to the standards of the Delaware Legislative Drafting Manual, including to ensure the consistency of language used throughout the provisions included in this Act.

This bill allows the Court to suspend an amount of the fine for uninsured driving if the defendant provides evidence that they have now secured insurance, demonstrating compliance with the law.

This Act adds an additional classification for surgical hospitals. House Bill No. 91 adopted by the 150th General Assembly (82 Del. Laws c. 73) revised the statutory definition of hospital and classified hospitals as either General, Long-term care, Psychiatric, or Rehabilitation. The existing classifications do not include surgical hospitals, those specialized hospitals providing surgical services at a level of care higher than freestanding surgery centers but whose patients do not require all of the services provided by “General” acute care hospitals. This Act will allow the Department of Health and Social Services to license and regulate surgical hospitals providing inpatient and outpatient surgical services to patients whose duration of stay is not expected to exceed 72 hours. This Act also makes technical corrections to existing law to make it consistent with the Legislative Drafting Manual.

This Act amends Delaware’s Consumer Fraud Act (Subchapter II, Chapter 25, Title 6 of the Code), to give Delaware consumers and businesses the protection against unfair acts or practices in commerce that the General Assembly intended to give them when it enacted the Consumer Fraud Act. When the General Assembly enacted the Consumer Fraud Act in 1965, it stated, in what is now § 2512 of Title 6 of the Code, that the purpose of the Consumer Fraud Act is “to protect consumers and legitimate business enterprises from unfair or deceptive merchandising practices in the conduct of any trade or commerce in part or wholly within this State,” and that “[i]t is the intent of the General Assembly that such practices be swiftly stopped.” However, § 2513(a) of the Consumer Fraud Act, as enacted, prohibits only deceptive practices, and does not protect consumers and businesses from unfair practices as the General Assembly intended. To address this, the Act amends § 2513(a) of the Consumer Fraud Act to include the term “unfair practice” among the activities explicitly prohibited by the Consumer Fraud Act. This aligns Delaware with the 7 states in the Top 10 of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Institute for Legal Reform’s 2017 Lawsuit Climate Survey, and the 44 states overall (plus the District of Columbia), which prohibit the use of unfair or unconscionable acts or practices in commerce. It will also align Delaware with federal law, which since 1938 has prohibited unfair practices in commerce in the Federal Trade Commission Act (15 U.S.C. § 45). In order to provide guidance as to the meaning of “unfair practice,” this Act uses the most common definition of unfairness or unfair practice used by states where unfairness has been defined either by statute or court decision (based on information published by the National Consumer Law Center) including California, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, and South Carolina, and provides that interpretations of similar language in other jurisdictions should be considered in determining its meaning. The word “immoral” was purposely omitted from the definition of “unfair practice” despite its use in the definition of unfair practice in many other jurisdictions. Prohibiting unfair practices will protect honest businesses by enabling them to compete fairly and effectively in the marketplace, in addition to protecting individual consumers (and businesses acting as consumers) harmed by such practices. Prohibiting unfair practices will also protect consumers in situations that may not be readily or easily addressed by current Delaware law, such as the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica scandal, price gouging during a state or national emergency, and other situations in which consumers are being unfairly taken advantage of and they are unable to reasonably avoid injury. Finally, prohibiting unfair practices will also enable the Delaware Attorney General to participate more effectively and robustly with other state attorneys general in multistate investigations and litigation seeking to protect consumers and remediate harm on a nationwide basis. The act also amends § 2513(a) to add the term “receipt,” to clarify that persons who provide goods or services at no charge to consumers—such as social media companies funded by advertising revenue—are not precluded from being held liable for engaging in consumer fraud simply because they may not directly sell or lease their goods or services to consumers.

Many of the State’s waters do not meet water quality standards to support their designated uses, such as for drinking, swimming or supporting aquatic life. The Clean Water for Delaware Act establishes a framework for assessing needs and planning and implementing projects that support Delaware’s efforts to improve the quality of the State’s water supply and waterways. A Delaware Clean Water Trust account is created as a funding source for executing projects highlighted by this framework. The Trust account will have oversight from the Clean Water Trust Oversight Committee (the “Committee”). The Committee will draw upon recommendations from the Water Infrastructure Advisory Council, (WIAC), the county Conservation Districts’, experts in the effected Cabinet agencies and other public input with the goal of assisting municipal and county governments and others in implementing affordable water quality projects. The Committee is required to develop and publish an Annual Report and multi-year Strategic Plan for Clean Water with annual updates.