Virginia tenants get broader protection from landlord retaliation

Starting January 1, 2027, Virginia law spells out more ways landlords can’t punish renters for exercising their legal rights. Protected acts include reporting housing-code violations, complaining to the news media, filing fair-housing or landlord-tenant cases, organizing with other tenants, and testifying. For tenants covered by the Virginia Residential Landlord and Tenant Act, written complaints to the landlord are protected too. Once a landlord knows, the landlord can’t retaliate by raising rent or fees, selectively cutting services or enforcing rules, changing lease terms without consent, harassing or coercing a tenant, threatening or filing an eviction case, or refusing to renew certain voucher-assisted tenancies. People who rent manufactured-home lots receive a similar expanded list of protections.

For renters covered by the Virginia Residential Landlord and Tenant Act, the right to recover actual damages and use retaliation as a defense in an eviction case was already in the law; HB 329 keeps those remedies. It removes the old sentence that expressly placed the burden of proving retaliatory intent on the tenant. Exceptions remain, including when rent is in default when an eviction case is filed, the landlord gave a termination notice before the protected activity, or a voucher-assisted tenancy is not renewed for good cause.

Del. Adele McClure carried the bill, with Dels. Rozia Henson and Phil Hernandez as co-patrons. After Gov. Abigail Spanberger recommended amendments, the House accepted the amended bill 70–29 and the Senate accepted it 25–14 on April 22. Spanberger approved it on May 14, 2026.