The bill that cleared the Senate 38-2 covers only political speech, after the consumer element was stripped out in committee.

The Senate bill’s sponsor is Glen H. Sturtevant Jr., R-Richmond, who had an up-close view of the principal’s defamation case in his former role as a member of the Richmond School Board.

In 2014, the then-principal of Lucille M. Brown Middle School filed a $3 million lawsuit accusing four parents of conspiring to write a damaging letter criticizing the school’s administration and atmosphere.

The letter, written to school system leaders, later was published by Style Weekly, Richmond’s alt-weekly newspaper.

The lawsuit was struck down, but the principal appealed all the way to the Supreme Court of Virginia, which struck down the case again.

That didn’t prevent the parents from having to hire lawyers to defend themselves, Sturtevant said.

“We’re talking about private citizens. Parents who are concerned about the education of their kids,” Sturtevant said. “And they were being faced with a multimillion-dollar lawsuit that had the potential to cost them their homes, their life savings, kids’ college funds, their livelihoods.”