New Laws: No Kings, No Trying Youths As Adults, No ‘Dynamic Pricing' — And A Prehistoric Shark

By William J. Ford, Maryland Matters

October 1, 2026

Police will no longer be able to wear masks, hospitals will not be able to deny emergency abortions in life-threatening situations, and retailers will be prohibited from setting different prices for the same item based on shoppers’ personal data, under new laws that took effect Thursday.

Motorists, meanwhile, will be required to clear snow and ice off their cars before driving; businesses will be required to accept cash for essential goods like food and medicine at certain times — and the state is getting another official symbol, this time a prehistoric shark that has not swum in state waters for 3.6 million years.

The more than 370 bills that became law Thursday are the usual grab bag of serious and silly, of technical tweaks, of proposed answers to sweeping national issues and personal responses to situations that took young lives in Maryland. Some passed on their first try, but many were years in the making.

Youth auto charging

One of those was the youth auto charging bill by Sen. William C. Smith Jr. (D-Montgomery), which took more than a decade to get approved. Maryland’s system of automatically charging youth as adults in some cases was an outlier among states, with only Alabama sending more 14- to 17-year-olds to adult court.

The law will raise the age from 14 to 16 when a youth could be tried as an adult for most crimes. It would still send 14- and 15-year-olds to adult court for first-degree murder or rape charges, but specifies that 16-year-olds charged with offenses such as first-degree assault and some firearms offenses would start in juvenile court.

The bill also prohibits youth charged as adults from being “detained or confined” in an adult prison, except when no “secure juvenile detention area” is immediately available, in which case a youth could be processed in an adult jail, but not be held for more than six hours.

The measure also requires annual reports, beginning Oct. 1, 2027, by the Governor’s Office of Crime Prevention and Policy to the General Assembly and the Commission on Juvenile Justice and Emerging and Best Practices. The reports will include the number of youths charged as adults, the charges they faced, and the number of federal violations that prohibit youth “from having sight and sound contact with adult offenders.”

No Kings

Spurred by the immigration confrontations across the country that led to arrests and shootings — and the deaths of Alex Pretti and Renée Good, who were shot by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Minneapolis — lawmakers pushed back with the No Kings Act.

Senate Bill 346 and House Bill 351, sponsored by Montgomery County Democrats Sen. Jeff Waldstreicher and House Majority Leader David Moon, let Marylanders or the attorney general’s office pursue civil litigation against a federal official who violated another’s constitutional rights under color of law.

The “color of law” language came from a bill previously sponsored by Del. Lorig Charkoudian (D-Montgomery), who has said the act creates a pathway against “federal lawlessness.” The law will not apply to a person acting under the authority of a joint task force “that primarily enforces the United States Code.”

Opponents argued that the measures were an overreach that will negatively affect the work of law enforcement, but the measures passed the House and Senate by comfortable margins.

Lawmakers also approved SB 1, a bill sponsored by Sen. Malcolm Augustine (D-Prince George’s) that will prohibit the wearing of face coverings by law enforcement officers while on duty, including those with ICE. Officers would also have to identify themselves in most circumstances.

The law calls on the Maryland Police Training and Standards Commission to develop guidelines on masks that will be used statewide. Any officer violating the law would be subject to a civil citation and a fine of up to $1,500.

Face coverings will include balaclavas, ski masks or neck gaiters. Exceptions would be made for officers “actively engaged in an undercover operation,” someone wearing a motorcycle helmet, a garment worn for religious purposes or for health-related reasons.

Say their names

A number of measures are named in honor of state residents whose deaths or endangerment sparked legislation that aims to prevent a repeat of their circumstances.

A series of new laws increasing oversight of the state’s foster kids took effect Thursday, including one named in honor of Kanaiyah Ward, a 16-year-old who died in a Baltimore hotel while in state custody from an apparent overdose of diphenhydramine, an over-the-counter allergy medicine.

Kanaiyah’s Law creates a new State Foster Youth Ombudsman in Human Services to serve as a neutral voice for youth in out-of-home placements. The new ombudsman will also investigate complaints made by foster kids and otherwise ensure that children in the state’s care are in safe and healthy locations.

After Kanaiyah’s death, the Department of Human Services instituted a new policy prohibiting the placement of foster children in unauthorized settings, like hotels and hospitals, overflow solutions that had been used by the state when it could not immediately find a foster placement. House Bill 1559 codifies that policy starting Thursday.

The Jillian and Lindsay Wiener Short-Term Rental Safety Act, HB 1221 and SB 624, were named for the Montgomery County sisters who died in a 2022 fire at a New York short-term rental without working smoke detectors. The law requires that short-term rentals like Airbnb and Vrbo have functioning fire extinguishers, smoke detectors and carbon monoxide alarms.

It also requires that evacuation routes and emergency response numbers be posted in such rentals to help ensure that, whether on vacation or a work trip, Marylanders can sleep safely in short-term rental units.

Mason’s Law will require that municipalities inventory all open drainage inlets, public and private, in their jurisdictions by next July and have a plan by April 1, 2028, for safety improvements of those drains. The law, sponsored by Sen. Karen Lewis-Young (D-Frederick) and backed by Lt. Gov. Aruna Miller (D), is named in honor of Mason Kearns, a Mount Airy 13-year-old who was swept into an open storm drain and drowned during a July 2025 storm.

Shari Bailey pushed for a package of bills collectively known as the LEAD Act, for Laila’s Elopement Awareness and Dissemination Act. It is named for Bailey’s daughter Laila who is autistic and nonverbal and who one day “eloped” — or wandered off from her caregiver, a situation familiar to many families with autistic kids or those caring for someone with dementia.

Laila was later found unharmed, but the fright spurred Bailey to act. That led to the passage of companion bills, House Bill 634 and Senate Bill 745, sponsored by Del. Aaron Kaufman (D-Montgomery) and Sen. Mike McKay (R-Western Maryland). The bills will require training for police on how to respond to a case of elopement.

One other bill in the package of five survived to become law today: HB 1434, sponsored by Del. Aletheia McCaskill (D-Baltimore County), requires the Maryland Department of Health to create a webpage of resources for family caregivers, including information on safety planning for wandering and elopement.

Protections for emergency abortions

Thursday also marks the start of statewide protection for emergency abortion access in cases where terminating a pregnancy is necessary to stabilize a pregnant patient.

The enactment of Senate Bill 169, whose lead sponsor was Sen. Clarence Lam (D-Anne Arundel and Howard), and House Bill 372, which was sponsored by Del. Lesley Lopez (D-Montgomery), enshrines Biden-era federal guidance that permitted emergency abortions to save the lives of pregnant patients under Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA).

In 2025, the Trump administration rescinded that guidance, muddying the waters of what is required under EMTALA, particularly regarding abortion services at faith-based institutions or in states with strict abortion bans.

Medical facilities in Maryland will now be required by state law to operate under the Biden-era guidance, regardless of federal policy, ensuring pregnant patients facing a medical crisis can receive an emergency abortion or be transferred to a medical facility that will perform that procedure so long as the patient’s situation does not worsen during the transfer.

Dynamic pricing prohibited

As of Thursday, grocery stores and delivery services in the state are prohibited from using surveillance data to tweak the price of items from shopper to shopper, also referred to as “dynamic pricing.” House Bill 895, the Protection from Predatory Pricing Act, aims to ensure that Marylanders are not charged extra for groceries on the assumption that certain shoppers may be willing to pay more for certain items.

It’s not clear how many food retailers in Maryland are engaging in “dynamic pricing,” but Gov. Wes Moore (D), along with presiding officers in the House and Senate, pushed to prohibit the practice in the state at a time when household budgets are stretched thin.

Sharks, rappers, religious heritage and more

After it appeared to be as dead as its namesake, a bill making the megalodon the official state shark managed to pass on the last day of the session, after it was cobbled together in SB 35 with bills to make the Natural History Society of Maryland the state’s official natural history museum and to have the governor proclaim Oct. 1 “Purple Lights Night,” to honor survivors of domestic violence.

The megalodon is a prehistoric shark with huge jaws that lives in Maryland today mainly in the form of teeth found on Chesapeake Bay beaches. It joins a long list of other state symbols, including an official state bird, dog, gem, dessert, sport, folk dance, spirit — rye whiskey, not anything to do with ghosts — and more.

Other bills that became law on Oct. 1 include:

• House Bill 661, sponsored by Montgomery County Democratic Dels. Sarah Wolek and Jared Solomon, proclaims January as Muslim American Heritage Month and May as Jewish American Heritage Month; the bill briefly ran into trouble in the Senate over a failed push to add a Christian American Heritage Month to the list.
• Lam and Sen. Katie Fry Hester (D-Howard and Montgomery) sponsored SB 627 to make Jan. 13 “Korean American Day,” to mark the day in 1903 when the first Korean immigrants arrived in the United States.
• The Protecting Artists Creative Expression, or PACE Act, would make it harder for prosecutors to admit the “creative expression” of an artist as evidence against the artist at trial, unless specific criteria are met. The bill, which took several years to pass, came after trials of rappers whose words were used against them at trial.
• HB 497 extends the duration of temporary protective orders in domestic abuse cases from a week after the order is served to two weeks after it is issued, and it requires a hearing on a final order within that two weeks.
• HB 191, sponsored by Del. Greg Wims (D-Montgomery), requires that businesses accept cash for in-person purchases of “essential goods” like food, fuel, health and hygiene products. The bill only applies between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. to purchases of less than $300, and it prohibits businesses from charging more for cash purchases.
• The Clear Before You Drive Act, HB 474 and SB 698, requires motorists to clear snow and ice off their vehicles before they hit the road, or face steadily escalating fines.

Maryland Matters is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501(c)(3) public charity. Maryland Matters maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Steve Crane for questions: scrane@marylandmatters.org. Follow Maryland Matters on Facebook and Twitter.