regulation had Northam's amendment been enacted. Although widely supported among animal rights organizations, such as PETA and the Humane Society of the United States, Northam's amendment was opposed by the bill's sponsor, David W. Marsden, who claimed that the amendment could potentially cause the Cumberland facility to close. Northam agreed to rescind his support for the amendment, while Marsden expressed a desire to implement a revised approach to the amendment's goals in 2021. Additional animal welfare bills signed by Northam in 2020 ban dealers and commercial breeders in Virginia from selling or importing any dog bred by any person who has committed certain violations of the Animal Welfare Act; ban any sale or loan in which a default could result in the repossession of any cat or dog; ban any hunt that guarantees the killing of a deer, bear, or wild turkey; ban any contact between the public and certain types of dangerous animals in captivity; limit the circumstances in which any cat or dog is allowed to be leased or rented; and establish more detailed standards for animal shelters. The law banning public contact with dangerous animals applies to any bear, cougar, jaguar, leopard, lion, nonhuman primate, tiger, or hybrid of such animals; as first written, the bill would have applied to elephants as well, but before the bill passed, it was revised to exclude elephants. Civil rights On March 8, 2019, Northam signed a bill repealing a minimum wage exemption that had applied to several jobs historically associated with black workers; a remnant of the Jim Crow era, the exemption had applied to shoe-shiners, ushers, doormen, concession attendants, and theater cashiers. A month before signing this bill, Northam had faced scandals over racist content found in his college and medical school yearbooks and responded to calls for his resignation by pledging to prioritize racial justice issues throughout the remainder of his term in office. On June 4 of that year, he announced plans to continue repealing all discriminatory state laws that had been passed during the Jim Crow era. To identify those laws, he established the Commission to Examine Racial Inequity in Virginia Law, which formed with nine members on September 3. The commission was assisted by students from Virginia Commonwealth University, the University of Richmond School of Law, and the University of Virginia School of Law. On December 5, the commission issued a report recommending the repeal