In the two years since the first and then second posts on pet leases and finance legislation, eight states now have some version of this type of statute. The first two in 2017 were California and Nevada, followed  in 2018 by New York, Washington, Indiana, Connecticut and New Jersey and in 2020, Virginia, successful on its second try, finishing its very short legislative session before the widespread pandemic disruption of many legislatures.

Virginia’s bill, Senate Bill 742 (McPike,) was approved April 2, 2020, chaptered and effective January 1, 2021. Virginia’s bill did, as had Connecticut’s, expressly exempt only dogs breeding leases, omitting cat breeding leases as discussed in our first post on this topic and leaving uncertainty whether there was a legislative purpose for the omission or merely accommodation of a request to exempt dog breeding leases, perhaps not realizing that this is a practice of all pedigreed cat registries.

Pet lease bills introduced in 2020 and not enacted included Rhode Island Senate Bill 2272 (Crowley et al,) Michigan House bill 5273 (Sowerby et al,) and Florida CS/SB 186 introduced by the Judiciary Committee and Senator Taddeo.

We might expect additional efforts in 2021 and beyond. If breeding lease exemptions should be necessary, these should include BOTH purebred dogs AND PEDIGREED cats.