Illinois, South Carolina, Virginia and Washington Join State Glass-Bill Wave

The week of January 9, 2026 brought the industry's second consecutive wave of state legislative filings. Illinois, South Carolina, Virginia and Washington each introduced bills that would materially affect how auto-glass shops operate, file claims and inform customers. Together with the Massachusetts and New York filings from the prior week, at least six states were now in active play at the opening of the legislative calendar.

Illinois Representative Thaddeus Jones introduced the state's "Motor Vehicle Glass Repair Act" on January 12 — a bill that closely tracked the NCOIL model. As written, it would prohibit insureds from transferring insurance policy rights to glass shops, ban shops from offering gifts or rebates in exchange for business and require that a claim number be obtained from the insurer before a shop officially accepts a job. Industry observers called it one of the most comprehensive of the new filings, noting that Illinois was a high-volume market where the claim-number provision could significantly affect how independent shops managed their intake workflows.

Virginia Delegate Karen Carnegie introduced HB 312, which also followed NCOIL's framework. The Virginia bill included ADAS disclosure provisions that would eventually become the core of the law that reached the governor's desk — requiring shops to tell customers whether their vehicles needed recalibration, whether the shop would perform that recalibration and what to do if the shop was unable to complete it. The Virginia bill was notable because it focused more narrowly on consumer-protective disclosure than on insurer-favorable claim-control provisions.

South Carolina and Washington filed bills with similar NCOIL-aligned language. Both bills were in very early stages and subject to significant revision, but their introduction demonstrated that the legislative wave was not limited to the Northeast and mid-Atlantic. The South Carolina bill was particularly significant given that the state had zero-deductible glass coverage rules that any new regulation would need to interact with carefully.

For shops in any of these four states, this period was a pivotal moment. The bills moved faster than many expected once they reached committee. Virginia's HB 312, for example, cleared both chambers within two months of introduction — a speed that caught some shop owners off guard. Shops that had not established relationships with their state representatives, or that had not joined a state or national trade association, found themselves without a voice at a critical legislative juncture.

The AGSC and IGA were actively monitoring all four states' bills and coordinating testimony for upcoming hearings. Both organizations had developed template talking points from prior legislative cycles in Iowa, Kentucky and other states, giving shop owners in newly active states a head start on articulating their concerns to legislators unfamiliar with how glass insurance claims actually work.

The recurring lesson from this legislative cycle, industry advocates said, was that waiting to engage until a bill approached a floor vote was too late. Shops that contacted their state representatives early and shared real-world examples of how specific provisions — such as the claim-number requirement — would affect their daily operations had a measurable impact on the final language of several bills. Virginia's removal of the claim-number provision was the clearest proof that this engagement worked.