A highly-touted bipartisan push to boost Oregon’s recreation, health and fitness economy by reinstating liability waivers appears to be in jeopardy.

Two identical bills in separate chambers of the Oregon Legislature aim to make such waivers legally enforceable in Oregon. Signing one bars an adult from suing a business for negligence. While neighboring West Coast states use them, they were effectively nullified by a 2014 Oregon Supreme Court ruling.

But on Monday, one of those bills did not meet a deadline to be assigned to a legislative work session, potentially imperiling its chances. The other bill faces a referral to a legislative committee where the chair says he’s not ready to pass it.

“I do not support it as it’s written,” Sen. Floyd Prozanski, D-Eugene, told OPB Monday evening. Prozanski, who is an attorney, said state law “makes it very clear that an individual who believes they have been wronged by somebody, they have the right for redress in the Oregon courts. And so, to me, there’s got to be a balance at this point.”

One of those bills, in the Oregon Senate, saw a groundswell of support from various business and recreation groups in a public hearing Monday, but backers now fear it will run out of time in the Senate Committee on Judiciary before a Feb. 16 deadline. Prozanski acknowledged the bill could die in committee, but said negotiations are ongoing.

The “timing of a short session does have consequences,” he said. “And is that a possibility? Absolutely it’s a possibility.”

Sen. Mark Meek, the Gladstone Democrat who spearheaded the bill, voiced his concerns over the bill’s difficult path forward at Monday’s public hearing. He said he had asked Senate President Rob Wagner to rescind the bill’s referral to the Senate Committee on Judiciary.

“If you have any opportunity to let your will be known, we would appreciate that,” Meek said during the public hearing.

In a statement on Monday, Wagner said, “The Oregon Legislature has a robust committee process that allows for legislators to fully vet proposals and work together to solve the challenges facing our state.”

“I trust that all legislators and stakeholders involved in addressing recreational liability this session will continue to engage in that process,” Wagner said.

The debate around liability waivers has come up in the Oregon Legislature before. Trial lawyers and others have voiced concern that such waivers could erode a customer’s freedom to take a business to court in the case of a preventable accident.

But the stakes around the bill this year are high, according to supporters from groups representing a variety of businesses and industries, including skiers, gyms, rafters and more. Without liability waivers for all industries, they say, insurance premiums are surging and insurers are leaving the state, harming Oregon businesses and forcing some to increase prices.

“Due to Oregon’s current non-business-friendly approach to liability waiver enforcement, my insurance rates have almost tripled in the last five years,” Tate Metcalf, owner of the Sisters Athletic Club in Deschutes County, said during a public hearing last week. “I’ve also found resistance in [getting] coverage even though I’ve never had a claim.”

A separate bill addressing liability in the recreation industry, Senate Bill 1517, would make a number of changes to state law specifically around when skiers can sue a business for negligence. The bill would also require ski resorts to allow customers to opt out of the waiver and instead pay a fee, among other things.

The bill was proposed at the request of the judiciary committee. As chair of that committee, Prozanski says he is using the bill as “a vehicle” to have a broader legislative discussion on legal liability in recreation. He said the bill could be amended to apply to other industries in addition to skiing.

“That bill is written, but it can, in fact, and will more than likely be modified based on discussions that are ongoing right now,” he said.

But the bill, which would not apply to other industries, has been criticized by groups that are lining up behind Meek’s bill, including those representing skiers.

“We are concerned that our bill, [SB] 1593, will be buried, and the other bill would somehow move forward, which would be a catastrophe for the industry,” said Jim Zupancic, the president of the Oregon Health & Fitness Alliance, which represents health and fitness clubs in Oregon.

“The approach that SB 1517 takes is so unworkable, it’s so convoluted, it’s so imbalanced that I can’t imagine how it could be implemented in any effective way in Oregon,” he said. “It would certainly not solve the problem. In fact, we believe that it would make the problem even worse.”

Others see it differently. Lauren Bagley’s son Myles was at the center of the 2014 Oregon Supreme Court case after an accident at Mount Bachelor in 2006 left him paraplegic and in a wheelchair. She spoke at a legislative hearing last week in support of SB 1517.

“For over 10 years the ski operators and now recreational businesses have been trying to make people sign enforceable waivers giving up their rights if they negligently hurt their customers all in the name of supposedly getting lower insurance rates,” Bagley said. “There are no guarantees from insurance companies that they will lower the rates.”

Backers have noted that the waivers would not have Oregonians sign away their right to sue under more egregious circumstances — such as gross or criminal negligence — in which a facility was aware of a problem but failed to address it before a person was harmed.

A similar bill was referred to the judiciary committee during last year’s legislative session. It died in committee despite having bipartisan support.

Meek could not immediately be reached for comment on the bill in the Oregon Senate.

The bill in the Oregon House of Representatives was backed by Rep. Jeff Helfrich, a Hood River Republican. He could not immediately be reached for comment.

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2026/02/10/oregon-legislation-imperiled-restores-waivers-gyms-skis-resorts/