2025 North Dakota Legislative Session Wrap-Up Summary
We’ve made it through the 2025 legislative session, and what a session it was! As I mentioned at our recent gala, the word amazing perhaps best describes it.
Session Overview
We identified 62 key bills in pro-life and pro-family categories and focused our efforts on them. Our engagement this session included:
Performing three reviews of all 1,089 bills to identify the most important pro‑life and pro‑family bills
Providing testimony on bills 98 times
Educating you about the bills through 32 total emails, which included weekly updates, Call-to-Action requests, and other emails
Helping you send 45,225 individual emails to legislators through our automated Call-to-Action (CTA) email system
Explaining how to testify both remotely and in person
Providing first drafts of bills to legislators as a starting point for their work
Helping legislators improve bills and maximize their chances of getting the needed votes
Giving legislators critical research and background information on bill subjects
Asking legislators on an ongoing basis to vote in a manner consistent with your values
Hosting a mid-session recap and informational event for legislators
and much more
The number of bills we tackled this session and the associated work represented a 24% increase over last session. Thankfully, we had additional help with Marit Heidbreder, our newest staff member. She helped us complete background research, write testimony, stay on schedule and organized, and sometimes testify in front of committees as well. In fact, during one particular week we needed to create testimony for 18 bills and testify in front of 5 different committees, so it was incredibly helpful for Jacob and me to have someone else to assist with all these tasks.
Results
This session was markedly different from 2023. It was trench warfare. We would make progress on a bill, see some of that get taken away, make a bit more progress, and so on. Nevertheless, I am happy to report that we were successful on 67% of the bills we engaged on, and trust me that those were hard-fought wins. We are grateful to you and to God for allowing us to be part of the journey to get great new legislation passed in North Dakota.
You can find a topical breakdown of the categories of bills we worked on, as well as a detailed list of the 62 bills in the full-length session wrap-up HERE.
Almost half of all the bills we worked on this session were focused on education and pornography. While there were some good education-related bills passed, such as SB 2241 authorizing charter schools and HB 1222 about reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, the two fundamental educational choice bills (SB 2400 and HB 1540) did not make it into law. On the subject of pornography, the emphasis was on protecting children online and a number of important bills were passed, including requiring age verification for those under 18 years of age (HB 1661/SB 2380) and HB 1351 which prohibited “revenge porn” and deepfake images.
There were three trafficking bills that we helped draft and fight for this session. Training for law enforcement on their interaction/response to human trafficking situations, education for school-aged children to help them identify and avoid human trafficking situations, and mandatory minimum sentencing for those found guilty of human trafficking. We are pleased that the latter two out of the three passed. On a related note, we were also very pleased that 100% of the life bills we worked on were won.
Thank you for partnering with us during this past legislative session. In particular, thank you for your ongoing support through prayers, direct involvement in political processes, and financial support. Together, we can ensure that North Dakota will remain a state that promotes God-honoring citizenship and advocates for policies that strengthen Faith, Family, and Freedom.