It is no secret that electric vehicles (EVs) require rare earth metals to operate. But what a lot of consumers don’t know is that the mining and refining of these metals is most frequently done at the hands of forced labor, in the worst cases, among children by Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in China’s Xinjiang region and the children of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

While our actions to resolve these problems are limited, we can start here at home. By prohibiting the procurement of EVs and prohibiting government contracts procuring EVs that may have been made through forced labor we can following suit with federal trends and using the power of state legislators to make a powerful and significant change.