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350 South Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA 02130
(617) 522-7282
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293 Second Avenue, Waltham, MA 02451
(781) 902-8400
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400 Broadway, Methuen, MA 01844
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347 Highland Ave., Salem, MA 01970
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State Legislation

2025-2026 Massachusetts Legislative Session

The legislative session began on January 1, 2025. Legislators have until January 17, 2025 to timely file legislation. Once bills have been filed, we will update the docket/bill numbers below (docket numbers will turn into different bill numbers around February/March). Around 6,000 bills are filed at the beginning of each legislative session and another couple of thousand are filed late.

Legislators have until bills are reported from their first committee (the joint committee based on subject matter the holds the hearing on the bills) to co-sponsor bills. Find out how to contact your legislators and learn tips on how to engage with them.

The state’s website, where legislation in addition to the below can be found, is malegislature.gov. To receive ongoing updates, join our Animal Action Team and follow us on Facebook, Instagram, X/Twitter, and TikTok.

 

Bills We Support:

Companion Animals

SD817 An Act to maintain stable housing for families with pets
This legislation ensures that certain state-aided housing cannot discriminate against, or include language that limits, a tenant or resident’s ability to live in that type of housing based on the size, weight, or perceived breed of a dog owned by a tenant/resident. It also puts a cap on the amount for pet rent a landlord can charge and prevents insurance companies from discriminating based on dog breed. Housing is the number one reasons dogs are surrendered and impacts the length of stay for dogs at shelters who spend more time waiting for homes.

Banning the retail sale of certain animals in pet shops
These bills will prohibit the sale of certain animals in pet shops unless the animals are from shelters or rescue organizations. Typically, pet shops obtain animals from substandard breeding facilities, which results in consumers unknowingly purchasing sick or genetically compromised pets. Massachusetts state records document such complaints from across the Commonwealth. State and federal records have also demonstrated that puppies from the worst “puppy mills” in the country have been sold to Massachusetts consumers via pet shops. This bill thus protects both animals and consumers, while having no impact on responsible breeders.

An Act to provide additional funding for animal welfare and safety programming
This bill would enable additional monies to be directed to the Mass Animal Fund for the purpose of spaying, neutering or vaccinating homeless dogs and cats, or those that live with low-income families, by stipulating that administrative fines, issued pursuant to Section 37 of Chapter 129 (“Enforcement actions; jurisdiction of commissioner of agriculture, district and superior courts”), would go to the Fund.

Cruelty Prevention – All Animals

HD810 An Act enhancing the issuance of citations for cruel conditions for animals  
This legislation expands upon current law, found in Ch. 140 sec. 174E, which allows civil citations to be issued when dogs are kept in cruel conditions. This legislation extends this protection to all domestic animals. Broadening the current statute’s scope in this way allows an effective response to problematic situations before they escalate to criminal animal cruelty.

HD336/SD134 Protecting animals from convicted animal abusers
This legislation would prohibit a person who is convicted of animal cruelty from owning or possessing an animal for a period of time determined by the court. Fines would be directed to the Massachusetts Animal Fund for the purpose of spaying/neutering and vaccinating homeless dogs and cats or to help animals whose families could not otherwise afford those surgeries.

SD1108 Preventing Animal Cruelty
These bills will create alternate pathways to ensure animals are safe without a felony charge. Massachusetts only has a felony animal cruelty penalty. However, there are times when such a penalty may not be appropriate or helpful (when mental health may be an issue, for example) but animals are still suffering or otherwise kept in violation of the cruelty statute. These bills would allow animals, when other resolutions have failed, to be removed for their health and safety. The goal is to ensure animals are safe from cruel situations – allowing the need for cruelty charges to be evaluated depending on the situation and what would be most effective and just.

Animals Used in Testing

An Act promoting humane cosmetics and other household products by limiting the use of animal testing
This legislation requires the use of non-animal test methods when available. Alternatives provide information of equivalent or superior quality and relevance to humans in comparison to animal tests. This bill applies to products such as cosmetics, household cleaners, and industrial chemicals, like those in paint; it does not apply to testing done for medical research, including testing of drugs or medical devices.

HD1908 An Act to protect consumers from contributing to inhumane animal testing for cosmetics
It is estimated that half a million animals, including rabbits, guinea pigs, and mice, suffer in cosmetic testing every year. Substances are forced down their throats, dripped into their eyes, or smeared onto their skin. This bill would prohibit the sale of most cosmetics newly tested on animals. Twelve other U.S. states and more than 40 countries worldwide have already passed similar bans.

Wild Animals

HD1721 An Act relative to rodenticides in the environment
Anticoagulant Rodenticides (ARs) are a particularly toxic group of poisons used as a form of rodent control. When ingested, ARs prevent the clotting of blood, and cause the animal who ingested it to sustain heavy internal bleeding, eventually causing death. The poison remains in the dead or dying rodent’s system for days. ARs impact non-targeted pets and wildlife populations, such as birds of prey, who rely on the poisoned rodents as a food source. As a result, the cats and dogs, hawks, eagles, owls, and bobcats who are exposed often suffer the same fatal hemorrhaging

An Act relative to ivory and rhinoceros horn trafficking
These bills clamp down on illegal ivory and rhino horn sales by restricting the sale, trade, and distribution of ivory and rhino horn in Massachusetts, ensuring that the Commonwealth no longer contributes to the unprecedented global poaching crisis. Elephants are being killed at an unsustainable rate; 35,000 African elephants were slaughtered in 2012 alone to satisfy the ivory market, an average of 96 per day, and forest elephants are predicted to be extinct within a decade if current poaching rates continue.

Farmed Animals

SD712/HD2107 An Act prohibiting the sale of newly farmed fur products
This legislation would prohibit the sale of new fur products sourced from factory farms. Horrific animal cruelty is involved in making fur products. On fur factory farms, wild animals spend their entire lives in cramped cages, deprived of the ability to engage in natural behaviors. The stress from living in a tiny cage causes serious welfare problems, such as self-mutilation and infected wounds, and can increase pathogen shedding and the risk of zoonotic disease transmission, such as COVID-19.

Bills We Oppose:

Wildlife

Sunday hunting legislation 
These bills would, in various ways, end the statewide ban on Sunday hunting. 86% of Massachusetts residents want to maintain the ban on Sunday hunting while hunters represent just 1% of the Massachusetts population. These bills prioritize a small minority over an overwhelming majority of Massachusetts residents who rely on Sunday to be the one day of the week during hunting season when they can safely venture into the woods without fear of an accident. As the third most densely populated state, lifting our Sunday hunting ban would introduce unnecessary risk to the public, as well as to the companion animals with whom they spend time in the outdoors.

Trapping legislation 
These bills would remove or weaken current restrictions on cruel body-gripping Conibear and leghold (sometimes called foothold) traps, which are used to capture fur-bearing animals, such as beaver and coyote. These changes would effectively allow a return to the days of recreational trapping with these inhumane and indiscriminate devices, something that 64% of Massachusetts voters rejected in 1996 when they voted in favor of the Wildlife Protection Act ballot initiative.

SD415 An Act relative to outdoor heritage
This legislation removes certain prohibitions on carrying firearms, making the enforcement of poaching laws more difficult; permits hunting with dogs of upland game or waterfowl, as opposed to hunting with dogs of only waterfowl and only in coastal waters and salt marshes; lifts the ban on moose hunting; and permits bow hunting of deer on Sundays.

An Act relative to hunting with artificial light
This bill would expand an already-archaic Massachusetts state law that permits spotlighting, which involves shining a bright light at a target animal to temporarily blind and paralyze them, at which point they are shot. Most states ban spotlighting because it is considered unsporting as it provides an opportunity to shoot an animal without giving chase. Yet this bill would broaden Massachusetts law. Currently, only racoon and opossum can be hunted with artificial light, while this bill would include coyote as well. Spotlighting is also dangerous to public health because hunters often spotlight not far from dark roads and the concentrated bright light makes it difficult to see beyond the illuminated animal.

See what was filed last session