Connecticut’s 2025 legislative session ended June 4, but the wheels of the General Assembly’s law-making machine keep on churning.
Beginning July 1, dozens of new laws are taking effect, including efforts to address underfunded services in the state like special education and child care.
Other laws seek to bolster public health and election security. Most of the new laws passed in the 2025 session.
Here’s what to know about some of those laws taking effect July 1.
Investments in early childhood care, special education
July 1 marks the beginning of a new fiscal year — bringing large investments to transform child care in Connecticut, in the hopes of paving the way to free infant, toddler care and pre-K for certain qualifying families in the coming years.
Various changes are also coming to special education. The changes come after local leaders raised concerns about growing costs and a need for more state assistance to plug funding shortfalls.
In response, lawmakers appropriated an additional $60 million to local districts for special education. A priority bill also requires staffing changes at private education facilities to be communicated to the parents or guardians, along with school boards and the Connecticut State Department of Education.
Public health, reproductive care and gender identity
Certain parts of this session’s flagship public health bill, passed under the budget, take effect July 1. These laws include codifying the current amount of recommended fluoride in public water supplies. Prior law matched those levels to standards from the federal Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
Local hospitals will also be mandated to provide required reproductive health care, such as an abortion, if there’s a serious risk to a pregnant patient's life or health. Providers also may not discriminate against a patient on other factors such as that person’s citizenship, ethnicity, insurance or economic status.
Under the law, a safe harbor fund is also established to help local nonprofits that provide reproductive or gender-affirming health care. The fund will be made up of private grants, gifts or donations, not state dollars.
Another law prohibits long-term care centers from discriminating against residents based on their gender identity, sexual orientation or HIV status. In addition, staff are required to get cultural competency training through the Department of Public Health.
Election audits and security
Changes are coming to the State Elections Enforcement Commission (SEEC). That’s the state’s election watchdog, created five decades ago after the Watergate scandal.
Under the new law, SEEC may do random audits of 20% of candidate committees, down from 50%. The law also requires that the group’s meetings be livestreamed.
By July 1, every municipality is also required to have installed cameras that will record each absentee ballot drop box, as part of a law approved in last year’s session. The measure was approved in the wake of multiple voting irregularities in the city of Bridgeport, which created intense scrutiny of election security in the state.
Energy and the environment
As the state grapples with more intense summer heat, new efforts to cut down on residents’ electricity bills will go into effect as part of the legislature’s flagship energy committee bill. Beginning July 1, state bonding money is authorized to fund the electric vehicle charging program, and hardship protection measures — taking it off of ratepayers’ public benefits charges, which make up a small part of electric bills.
Parts of the state’s new climate resiliency bill also go into effect, including allowing municipal reserve funds and Town Aid Road grants to cover purchases for capital improvements to avoid impacts of high precipitation, flooding, sea level rise and extreme heat. Plans of conservation and development must also account for climate impacts beginning July 1. The law also begins to require restricted use of rodenticides and neonicotinoids.
E-book contracts
Connecticut libraries don’t own electronic books like they would traditional paper books. Instead, they have contracts for those titles, which need to be regularly re-purchased and can be a costly expense for local libraries seeking to provide regular access to popular titles.
A new law looks to resolve those issues, but there’s a catch: the law won’t be implemented unless one or more states with a combined population over 7 million people adopt a similar one.
The law would prohibit Connecticut libraries from entering into agreements with publishers that restrict the number of e-book loans. Those contracts are also only good at a library for 26 loans, or two years, which public libraries say are unsustainable.
Lawmakers not done quite yet this year
Though the regular session is over, state legislators are also expected to return to the state Capitol this year for more unfinished business.
Lamont has promised to call legislators back into a special session this fall to address the housing crisis, after he vetoed this session’s major housing bill.
With the Trump administration cutting funding to Connecticut, and possible Congressional cuts to Medicaid and food aid, legislative leaders have also indicated they may need to reconvene to properly account for the lost federal aid.
The governor is expected to sign more bills from this session in the coming weeks, and updates on those laws can be found on the governor's bill notification website.
The next regular session is scheduled for February 2026.
