Youngkin then made several tweaks to the bill, including adding an emergency clause that allows the legislation to go into effect immediately. The governor’s recommendations were approved by the Senate on Tuesday.
The bill, introduced in January by Republican state Sen. Siobhan Dunnavant, had passed the state Senate last week, with three Democrats joining Republicans in voting yes.
The signing ceremony is scheduled for 3 p.m. ET at the Virginia State Capitol, according to Youngkin’s office.
Youngkin had campaigned on rolling back Virginia’s Covid-19 restrictions and giving parents more agency in their children’s education, but the order he signed on his first day in office was met with lawsuits from Virginia school districts and a group of parents who wanted the mask requirements to remain in place.
At least three suits related to the executive order are making their way through state courts, including one filed earlier this week by a group of parents in Fairfax County who had asked a judge to bar the school district from enforcing its mask mandate.
A hearing in another suit brought by a group of parents in Loudoun County opposed to their district’s mask mandate is scheduled for Wednesday afternoon.
Many counties and cities, however, have their own indoor mask mandates and many individual school districts still require students to wear masks even in the absence of a statewide mandate.
Virginia Del. Eileen Filler-Corn, the Democratic leader in the House, on Monday argued that Youngkin is not giving local school districts the final say on mask mandates in the same way that Democratic leaders in other states are.
“If this bill passes, and it pains me to say this, well, welcome to Florida,” she said on the House floor Monday before the bill was passed.
CNN’s Virginia Langmaid, David Shortell and Paul LeBlanc contributed to this report.
