Every tracker that lists weight discrimination laws in the United States has a Delaware row, and almost every one of them says the same thing: pending. It is the most reassuring word in the table and the least informative one. It suggests motion. In this case there has been none for sixteen months.
We checked the record of House Bill 115 of the 153rd General Assembly at the Delaware General Assembly’s own legislative information system on 29 August 2026. This is what is actually there, and what it takes for a bill in that position to move.
What the bill would do
HB 115 carries the long title “AN ACT TO AMEND THE DELAWARE CODE RELATING TO THE PROHIBITION OF DISCRIMINATION BASED ON WEIGHT, HEIGHT, OR BODY SIZE.” Its synopsis is broader than most state bills of this kind. It would prohibit discrimination based on weight, height, or body size in transportation, public accommodation, housing, commerce and trade, employment, jury selection, education, and public administration.
The definitions are unusually careful. “Body size” is defined as the physical magnitude, extent, or bulk of a person, including that person’s relative or proportionate dimensions, and it expressly covers “metrics, ratios, measurements, ratings, or scores that include, in whole or in part, weight, height, or body size.” That last clause matters. It reaches the numbers that stand in for a body, not only the body. A rule written in terms of an index rather than a person would still be covered.
Whether that drafting survives contact with a committee is a question the record cannot answer, because the bill has never been through one.
The entire record, in two lines
The bill’s action history at the General Assembly consists of exactly two entries:
- 8 April 2025: Introduced and Assigned to Administration Committee in House
- 14 May 2025: Motion to Release Failed
That is all of it. There is no committee report. There is no roll call of any kind. There are no amendments. The bill’s status line still reads “House Administration 4/8/25”, the same committee it went to on the day it was introduced, and the site’s own explanation of what typically happens next still says a committee hearing takes place within twelve legislative days. That sentence has been true in the abstract and false in this case for sixteen months.
Note what the record does not say. It does not report how the release motion failed or by how much. No vote is recorded against it. The attempt is logged as failed, and the margin is not part of the public record.
What it takes to get a bill out of a committee that will not act
The House adopted its rules for this General Assembly on 14 January 2025 by passing House Resolution 3. Rule 37(b) covers the situation directly: bills not acted upon by the assigned committee within twelve legislative days, where the House prime sponsor has requested action, “can be petitioned out of committee pursuant to Rule 27.”
Rule 27 is titled “Petition of bill or resolution out of committee” and reads in full:
Every bill or resolution which has been in committee for a period of more than twelve (12) legislative days and the Prime House Sponsor has requested that the bill or resolution be acted upon, except those assigned to the Appropriations Committee pursuant to Rule 22, shall, upon written request of the majority of the members elected to the House, be reported to the House for a decision as to its further disposal.
The operative phrase is “written request of the majority of the members elected to the House.” Not a majority of those present, not a majority of the committee. A majority of the whole chamber, in writing.
The Delaware House of Representatives has 41 seats, districts 1 through 41. A majority of the members elected to the House is therefore 21 signatures.
The arithmetic nobody puts in the tracker
HB 115 lists its sponsors on the bill detail page. The prime sponsor is Rep. Sophie Phillips of the 18th district. There is one additional sponsor from the other chamber, Sen. Lockman of the 3rd Senate district, who cannot sign a House petition. The co-sponsors are Reps. Bolden, Gorman, S. Moore, Morrison, Neal, Ross Levin, Burns, and Lambert.
That is nine members of the House of Representatives: the prime sponsor plus eight co-sponsors.
Nine of the twenty-one signatures the rule requires. To get the bill in front of the full House over the committee’s inaction, its supporters would need twelve more members than have put their names on it, and none of those twelve has done so in sixteen months. This is not a claim about whether they would if asked. It is the distance between the bill’s own sponsor list and the threshold in its own chamber’s rules, and it is the single most useful number about HB 115 that no tracker carries.
And the clock has run out for this session
Delaware’s constitution puts a hard edge on the calendar. Article II, § 4(b) provides that the General Assembly may continue in session each calendar year as long as the public interest requires, “however, each session may not extend beyond 5:00 p.m. on the last day of June unless the session is recalled by the Governor or the mutual call of the presiding officers of both Houses.”
The 153rd General Assembly’s 2026 session ran to that edge. The most recent legislative action recorded in the assembly’s own list of recent legislation is dated 1 July 2026. Since then the assembly’s session calendar shows committee meetings and task force meetings, and no session days. As of 29 August 2026, the last time the Delaware legislature acted on any bill was nearly two months ago, and HB 115 was not one of them.
So a bill still described as pending sits in a committee that has not reported it, in a chamber that is not sitting, in a General Assembly whose members face election in November. For it to advance in this General Assembly at all, the session would have to be recalled by the Governor or by the mutual call of both presiding officers.
Why the word is the problem
“Pending” and “failed” are not opposites in a legislative tracker. They are two labels for the same underlying fact, applied at different moments and by different conventions. A bill that has been read once, referred once, and never acted on is pending. So is a bill in active negotiation with a committee vote scheduled. The word cannot tell them apart, and the tables that use it do not try.
This matters beyond Delaware. We built our own reference page of weight discrimination laws in August 2026 and found, in the course of checking every line at the originating legislature, that published lists routinely carry bills that died, bills that are a different bill entirely, and bills whose printed text is narrower than their summaries claim. “Pending” is the same failure in a quieter form: not a wrong fact, but a true word carrying no information.
The fix is not a better adjective. It is the date of the last action, the committee it sits in, and the rule that governs getting it out. For HB 115 those are: 14 May 2025, House Administration, and twenty-one signatures.
What we checked, and what we are not saying
Checked on 29 August 2026 at the Delaware General Assembly’s legislative information system: the bill detail page for HB 115 of the 153rd General Assembly, including its full action history, sponsor list, committee reports, and roll calls; the House Rules as adopted on 14 January 2025; the roster of the House of Representatives; the session calendar; and the recent legislation list. Article II, § 4 was read in the published text of the Delaware Constitution.
We make no prediction about whether HB 115 will pass, in this General Assembly or a later one. Predicting bills is not reporting them. We also take no position here on any question about weight and health. The subject of this article is a legislative procedure and a sponsor count, not a body.
If the record changes, this page will say so, with the date it was checked.