OAN Staff Abril Elfi
12:42 PM – Tuesday, February 25, 2025
Maryland’s House of Delegates has advanced a bill to reverse a state law in place that bans condoms and birth control from being sold in vending machines at public schools in Maryland.
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Delegate Nicole Williams (D-Md.) introduced House Bill 380 (HB380), which seeks to repeal a decades-old ban on vending machine sales of contraceptives in K-12 public schools — funded by state taxpayers.
Current penalties for violating the law include a $1,000 fine.
“This bill repeals the misdemeanor prohibition against and associated penalty for selling or offering for sale a contraceptive or contraceptive device by means of a vending machine or other automatic device at a kindergarten, nursery school, elementary school, or secondary school,” a synopsis of the bill reads on the Maryland General Assembly’s website.
After the bill was introduced, Delegate Kathy Szeliga (R-Md.) responded, declaring that her state’s lawmakers have “lost their minds” — while warning parents to “wake up.”
“MD lawmakers have officially lost their minds. Condom vending machines in SCHOOLS—from preschools to high schools? Yes, you read that right,” Szeliga said after the bill’s passage in the House. “Thanks to HB 380, the ‘Condoms for Kiddies’ bill, your child’s school could soon be a one-stop shop for birth control. What’s next, hormone therapy during recess? This is what happens when the people in charge put ideology over common sense.”
The bill passed the House 89-to-41 and now moves to the Senate for consideration.
Even though various states have reversed similar laws, Maryland remains one of the few states where selling contraceptives through a vending machine in schools is still criminalized.
However, the law did not necessarily prevent students from accessing condoms, as school nurses, clinics, and outside organizations have typically provided contraception in a number of cases. Yet, it explicitly prevented schools from installing vending machines as a distribution option.
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