CHARLESTON (LifeSiteNews) — The West Virginia Senate has passed legislation that would forbid state agencies from working with organizations that engage in viewpoint discrimination against conservative media.

Senate Bill 531, the First Amendment Preservation Act, would bar state agencies from entering any contract or agreement with “any media monitoring organization” or “any advertising or marketing agency that utilizes the services of a media monitoring organization for purposes of the agency’s contract or agreement”; or otherwise supporting media monitoring organizations.

Any advertising or marketing agency that does contract with the state would have to “require any and all companies submitting a bid or proposal with respect to any such contract for advertising services to provide written certification that the company is in compliance” with those standards, as well.

The legislation is meant to curb the influence of so-called “fact-checking” outlets such as PolitiFact, which has long been notorious for its liberal slant; and “bias-monitoring” services such as NewsGuard, a web browser extension that supposedly identifies untrustworthy websites, but which LifeSiteNews has caught in the past attaching false and biased “fact checks” to valid stories. Such tools have long been used to stigmatize conservative sources and other dissenters from favored left-wing narratives.

“It was simply brought to my attention that ideologically-based fact checkers and media monitors are a distinct potentiality in West Virginia as it is already occurring in other states; so we set out to catch this proactively,” Republican state Sen. Mike Azinger, the bill’s lead sponsor, told The Daily Signal. “Also, I had a viscerally positive reaction to the bill when it was offered to me to sponsor it, since I have run and passed many a number of freedom and First Amendment bills; this drew me naturally to SB 531, The First Amendment Preservation Act.”

The bill passed the West Virginia Senate 30-2. It now moves to the state House of Delegates, where the 90-9 Republican majority is likely to have no trouble sending the bill to Republican Gov. Patrick Morrisey’s desk for signature.

Florida already has a similar law on the books, and the issue has received federal attention as well. The 2025 National Defense Authorization Act included language prohibiting contracts with firms like NewsGuard, and the Federal Communications Commission has demanded tech giants like Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Apple to disclose the extent of their use of the tool.