Connecticut
These Connecticut laws are taking effect in 2025
Connecticut recreational cannabis sales begin
Connecticut has officially begun recreational cannabis sales, with seven dispensaries opening across the state. All adults over the age of 21 are now able to purchase cannabis products in the state.
CONNECTICUT – Several new laws in Connecticut are taking effect in 2025, from expanded paid sick days to minimum wage increases.
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Here’s a look at some of them that could impact your life:
Connecticut’s minimum wage is increasing from $15.69 per hour to $16.35 per hour.
CT Gov. Ned Lamont signed Public Act 19-4 back in 2019, which implemented five incremental increases in the minimum wage between 2019 and 2023, followed by future adjustments tied to the percentage change in the federal employment cost index.
Back in May, Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont signed legislation “strengthening the state’s laws regarding paid sick days protections by expanding them to ensure that more workers are covered and have access to them.”
The state’s existing laws require employers with over 50 employees that are mostly in specific retail and service occupations to provide their employees with up to 40 hours of paid sick leave annually. Effective Jan. 1, the laws will apply to workers of nearly every occupation.
“Our existing paid sick days laws include important protections for certain workers, however there are broad categories left unprotected, and this update will expand this coverage to help ensure that people do not have to choose between going to work sick and sacrificing a day’s wage,” Lamont said.
On Election Day, Connecticut voters approved an amendment to the state’s constitution that could make it easier to cast ballots by mail or through drop boxes in future elections.
The amendment lifts long-standing restrictions that only allowed people in the state to vote by absentee ballot if they were going to be out of town, are sick or disabled, or couldn’t get to a polling location because of religious restrictions.
Effective Jan. 1, the act prohibits anyone from knowingly making another individual liable for “coerced debt” (i.e., generally, certain credit card debt incurred by a domestic violence victim who was coerced into incurring it).
“Specifically, if a victim gives a claimant certain information and documentation that a debt is coerced debt, the claimant must pause all collection activities on the debt for at least 60 days, review the victim’s submission and other available information it has, and then continue or end its collection based on the review,” the bill said.
PA 24-52—sSB 13 “expands the student loan payment tax credit for qualified employers that make eligible student loan payments on a qualified employee’s behalf.”
The search continues for a rare collection of Abraham Lincoln artifacts that went missing after a visit to Connecticut College in New London, including a letter written days after the president’s assassination.
Sameer Somal, a Lincoln enthusiast, said the artifacts disappeared Tuesday after he accidentally left the folder containing them on top of his car and drove away following interviews with fellow Lincoln scholars at Connecticut College.
“The plan was to interview them, and I was going to show them some of these artifacts,” Somal said.
Somal said he has spent years assembling the collection, which included portraits of Lincoln, original Civil War-era newspapers, and an original invitation to Lincoln’s 1864 inaugural ball.
Among the items was a document Somal described as especially significant.
“There was a letter, which is particularly precious, written on April 17th, 1865, from General William Tecumseh Sherman about the assassination of Mr. Lincoln,” Somal said.
After realizing the folder was missing, Somal contacted campus security. He said he was initially told the folder had been recovered, but later learned security had mistaken it for a book that had fallen from his car.
“I proceeded to look in the dark in my state of disappointment and trauma,” Somal said.
The next day, Somal made the five-hour trip back to New London and checked with the police. He believes the folder likely fell on or near the Connecticut College campus, but it has not been turned in.
Somal said the loss goes beyond the monetary value of the artifacts, as the collection was intended to serve as a centerpiece for a future museum dedicated to Lincoln in Illinois.
Now he is asking whoever found the folder to return it.
“I will do anything to get these items back and anything to help someone else in life if I can just get them back,” Somal said.
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