New Laws Going into Effect on January 1st, 2025
Source: State of Connecticut House Democrats
Expanded paid sick leave
One of the biggest items passed in this year’s legislative session was an expansion of the state’s paid sick day’s requirements. Currently, the state requires certain employers with more than 50 employees to guarantee 40 hours of paid sick leave.
Starting on January 1st, nearly all private sector employers with at least 25 employees will also be required to guarantee 40 hours of sick leave. That expansion is the first part in a three-step process that will eventually see virtually all private employees covered by the state’s sick day requirements. The threshold for the requirement will be lower to include employers with 11 employees in 2025 and one employee in 2027.
Most seasonal employees will be exempt from the new requirements, as they are under the current law. Employers who already provide 40 hours of paid time of any kind—including sick days, vacation, and personal days—will also be exempt from the new requirements.
The legislature approved the expansion of paid sick days largely on partisan lines, with nine moderate Democrats joining every Republican in the state House of Representatives in opposing the bill.
“The expansion of paid sick days to more workers makes sense, both from an economic and a societal standpoint,” State Sen. Martin Looney, the Democratic president of the State Senate, said when the expansion was passed. “For low and moderate-income people, the loss of even a couple of day’s pay is a real hardship; it could mean the difference between having the rent that month or not.”
In the State Senate, the bill was approved along party lines with every Republican uniformly opposed. Republicans in both chambers of the legislature cited the costs that the new mandates would place on small business owners, especially those with only a handful of employees.
“It will make businesses reticent to choose Connecticut as a place to operate,” State Sen. Steve Harding, the top Republican in the State Senate, said at the time. “It will raise costs for consumers. It also reveals how out of touch majority Democrats are. Big government telling mom-and-pop shops what they must do and forcing them to comply is their priority.”
Hemp THC Regulations
The 2024 legislative session saw the passage of a sweeping bill intended to clarify some of the state’s cannabis and hemp regulations. Starting in the new year, only licensed cannabis dispensaries will be able to sell hemp-based products that have between one-half milligrams and five milligrams of THC. That change will effectively set an age limit on the sale of hemp-based THC products where none had previously existed.
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The hemp and cannabis reforms came in response to rapidly shifting legal, regulatory, and market dynamics. The proliferation of THC-infused products spurred lawmakers to act in a largely bipartisan manner to crack down on unregulated sales.
“It is important that we keep high-potency drugs out of the reach of minors and ensure that they are only sold in licensed regulated facilities,” State Rep. David Rutigliano, a Republican from Trumbull, said. Rutigliano is the top-ranking House Republican on the committee primarily responsible for the regulation of cannabis and related products.
Protections for home health workers
The high-profile 2023 death of a Connecticut nurse sparked legislative action to provide better protections for home healthcare workers.
Joyce Grayson, a 63-year-old nurse, was found dead in a Willimantic halfway house where she had a scheduled appointment. Michael Reese, a convicted rapist, was charged with murder.
Portions of the bill going into effect on January 1st will require the state to establish a grant program to incentivize home health agencies to provide security escorts for home health care and to report incidents of threats and abuse to the state health department annually.
Absentee ballot fraud measures
New measures intended to curb abuse of absentee ballots are also slated to go into effect in January. It’s been over a year since the ballot stuffing scandal in Bridgeport rocked the state’s most populous city and sparked an unprecedented set of court-ordered “do over” elections.
At the heart of the scandal were widespread allegations of rampant absentee ballot fraud in the city’s Democratic mayoral primary. Leaked city surveillance footage appeared to show individuals, later identified by a judge as supporters of incumbent Mayor Joe Ganim, placing multiple envelopes each into absentee ballot drop boxes.
Earlier this year, a number of prominent Bridgeport Democrats, including a former city employee and a sitting member of the city council, were charged with multiple crimes related to alleged absentee ballot abuse in the 2019 mayoral election.
The Bridgeport ballot stuffing scandal prompted action from state lawmakers who worked to pass a ballot security bill earlier this year. Starting in January, additional measures will be taken to curb potential abuses in the process of applying for absentee ballots.
The ballot security bill passed with strong bipartisan support, though many Republicans had pushed for more aggressive action, including imposing mandatory prison time for those found guilty of ballot crimes.
