Virginia Republican Morgan Griffith held his first hearing as the new chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Health subcommittee on July 16. His recent appointment fills a vacancy at the top of the panel after Georgia Republican Earl L. “Buddy” Carter announced on July 2 that he was giving up the gavel to focus on his Senate campaign.
Griffith brings to the role a focus on opioid policy, including legislation he led in the House to permanently classify fentanyl analogs as controlled substances. On July 16, President Donald Trump signed into law the Senate version of that measure led by Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La.
A member of the ultraconservative Freedom Caucus, Griffith was a vocal critic of COVID-19 health policies, taking particular issue with vaccine mandates. He also asserted that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention didn’t provide Congress with enough information on how it planned to overhaul the agency in the wake of the pandemic.
Getting to Congress: Hailing from Salem, Va., Griffith earned his bachelor’s degree in history at southwestern Virginia’s Emory and Henry College and a law degree from Washington and Lee University. A career attorney, Griffith’s practice specialized in criminal traffic law, constitutional law and civil litigation. He was first elected to the Virginia House of Delegates in 1994 and became the House majority leader six years later. In 2010, Griffith was the consensus party choice to take on Virginia’s 9th District U.S. House incumbent, Rick Boucher, a 14-term Democrat who had angered coal interests with a vote to establish a cap-and-trade system to limit greenhouse gas emissions. Griffith took 51 percent of the vote in a very strong year for Republicans and has since easily held the seat.
His District: Virginia’s 9th District covers the state’s southwestern tip, from the outskirts of Lynchburg and Roanoke to the Cumberland Gap, where the Kentucky and Tennessee borders meet. One of the largest economic presences in the district is Virginia Polytechnic and State University, better known as Virginia Tech, a major research university in Blacksburg with over 38,000 students. Much of the Appalachian countryside is sparsely populated outside small cities such as Martinsville, where a former DuPont nylon plant is now a Superfund site. Coal mining and manufacturing remain key industries, but their decline is evident: The district’s median household income is the lowest in the state at $56,863, just over a third of what households in Northern Virginia’s 11th District bring home. Residents are heavily conservative and Griffith won his latest reelection in 2024 with more than 70 percent of the vote.
What’s New: Griffith is a long-term opponent of D.C. statehood, reintroducing legislation in June that would make most of the District of Columbia a part of Maryland while carving out a small federal district. A history buff, Griffith has previously argued his case by citing James Madison’s 1787 Federalist Papers, in which the fourth president wrote against making the seat of government reliant on any single state.
Point of Interest: An avid birder, Griffith has been hailed by groups ranging from the American Bird Conservancy to the National Glass Association for legislation that would mandate design standards aimed at reducing bird fatalities from collisions with windows and other reflective surfaces on public buildings. Griffith and Illinois Democratic Rep. Mike Quigley have been offering similar proposals together for more than a decade.
David Jordan contributed to this report.
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