Senator Jim Justice was sworn in on Tuesday. The next day, he skipped his first two floor votes.

Mountain State Spotlight
by Ken Ward Jr.
January 16th, 2025

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While campaigning for the Senate, Justice promised to help the Republican effort to crack down on immigrants. Once he took office, he missed two votes on a key GOP bill on the issue.

Sen. Jim Justice skipped his first two opportunities to give West Virginians their say on the floor of the United States Senate.

The Senate website lists him as “Not Voting” on recorded votes that took place Wednesday at 5:57 p.m. and 6:39 p.m.

As West Virginia’s governor, Justice was consistently late, refused to live in Charleston and focused on his private business affairs.

The two votes Justice missed were on amendments to the Laken Riley Act. The bill requires the deportation of undocumented immigrants charged with minor crimes.

The legislation is named for a Georgia nursing student who was killed last year by an undocumented immigrant who had previously been arrested for shoplifting. The bill amends federal law to apply mandatory detention language to undocumented people who are charged with, arrested for, or convicted of any theft-related offense. Immigrant rights organizations say the change is unnecessary because the Department of Homeland Security already has authority to detain anyone facing deportation proceedings.

When campaigning for the Senate, Justice said he would fight to remove “illegal immigrants and dangerous criminals” from the United States.

One of the votes Justice missed expanded the list of offenses that would force detention. That amendment easily passed. The other vote was on an amendment to remove new authority for state attorneys general to sue federal immigration authorities over detention violations. That amendment failed.

Justice’s office did not respond to queries about why he missed the votes.

During his two terms as West Virginia’s governor, Justice continued to live in Lewisburg instead of in the Governor’s Mansion next door to the Capitol, and was habitually late for public events. He continued to play a major role in running his family’s businesses, and also kept coaching high school basketball, activities that drew his attention away from running state government.

While campaigning for the Senate, Justice said “there’s not a fiber in me that wants to go to D.C.,” but added that he felt obligated to run to help flip the Senate to Republican control.

Greatly popular despite those issues, Justice cruised to a Senate victory with 69 percent of the vote in November’s general election.

Earlier this month, Justice skipped an official swearing in of new senators on Jan. 3 so he could remain governor until Gov. Patrick Morrisey was inaugurated on Monday. Justice was sworn in on Tuesday.

Earlier in the day Wednesday, Justice did take part in an Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing to consider the President-elect Donald Trump’s nomination of oil industry executive Chris Wright as Energy Secretary.

At the hearing, Wright faced tough questioning about his insistence that climate change has not fueled more serious wildfires like those in Los Angeles, a position that is contrary to the scientific consensus on that issue.

Justice, meanwhile, opined that “energy is everything,” and asked Wright if he supported a federal strategy to embrace “all of the energy forms.” 

Wright responded: “Energy is not a sector of the economy. It is the sector of the economy that enables everything else we do.”

On Thursday morning, Justice took part in a committee confirmation hearing for Doug Burgum, a former North Dakota governor nominated by Trump to be Interior Secretary. 

Justice encouraged Burgum to take steps to address an environmental permitting process that Justice said “has gotten totally outrageous.” An Interior Department lawsuit against Justice’s family coal empire over more than $7 million in unpaid fines and fees is still pending in federal court.

Contact
WV Senator James C. Justice
Website: https://www.justice.senate.gov/

Charleston, West Virginia
900 Pennsylvania, Suite 629
Charleston, WV 25302
Phone# 304-342-5855

Washington, DC
SD-G12 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
Phone# 202-224-3954