CT’s New Year Laws: Paid Leave, Hemp Rules, Ballot Security & More

CONNECTICUT — Hemp products, paid time-off, and the security of absentee ballots all received extra scrutiny in Hartford in 2024, and that’s reflected in new laws going into effect on Jan. 1.

The number of companies offering their employees paid sick leave is set to increase in 2025. Currently, state law requires certain businesses with 50 or more workers (excluding manufacturers and certain non-profits) to guarantee 40 hours of paid sick leave. That criterion loosens to 25 employees, regardless of industry, or non-profit status, come January. The ceiling drops to 11 employees in 2026.

Currently, covered employees may use paid sick leave to care for their minor or disabled child (or child for whom they stand in place of a parent) or spouse. The new law expands the umbrella to include workers’ adult children, siblings, parents, grandparents, grandchildren, and anyone related to the employee by blood or affinity whose close association the employee shows is equivalent to those family members.

Employees will soon earn paid leave at the accelerated rate of one hour per 30 hours worked, down from 40 hours worked, under the current law. Employees were also required to provide employees with up to seven days’ advance notice of their leave-taking, if the paid sick leave was foreseeable. That notification will no longer be necessary.

State lawmakers put hemp under the microscope during the most recent legislative session and came up with a new classification. “Moderate-THC hemp products,” including infused beverages, containing between one-half milligrams and five milligrams of THC may only be available from licensed cannabis dispensaries after Jan. 1. “An Act Concerning Cannabis And Hemp Regulation“effectively prohibits sales of these products to anyone under the age of 21.

A new law tightening the security surrounding absentee ballots goes into effect in January. Public Act 24-148 requires residents to personally request additional absentee ballot applications, town clerks to track how the ballots are received, and municipalities to make video recordings of drop boxes available to residents, among many more crackdowns.

The security surrounding home health aides will also be on the rise in 2025. Provisions in Public Act 24-19 require the Department of Social Services to establish a grant program to fund safety escorts and technology for staff safety checks. The law also requires workers to report to the Department of Public Health a patient’s verbal threat, abuse or similar incidents. The legislation was drafted following the death of a Connecticut visiting nurse during an appointment with a convicted rapist, charged with the nurse’s murder last year.

Victims of “coerced debt” — oftentimes spouses forced to assume the tabs of their deadbeat partners — can finally catch a break under a new law requiring collection agencies and other claimants to pump the brakes while such cases are reviewed. Better still, if a judge determines a debt was coerced, the coercer is civilly liable to the claimant for the debt amount and may be civilly liable for the debtor’s attorney’s fees and other costs in establishing that the debt was coerced.

New businesses planning to file with the state should make sure they’re up-to-date with the latest changes that expand the authority of the Secretary of State, alter trade name laws and make changes with the Connecticut Business Registry. In general, the state will be looking for more information from new businesses looking to hang out a shingle in 2025.