Some 300 new state laws take effect Jan. 1 covering everything from road safety to artificial intelligence, most of them passed during a two-year legislative term that enters its final days when lawmakers return to Springfield later this week.
The Democratic-led General Assembly is scheduled to meet for four days before a new legislature is inaugurated on Jan. 8. The attention of the new General Assembly — still controlled by Democratic supermajorities in both chambers — may turn toward efforts to preemptively counter federal action that might be taken by Republican President-elect Donald Trump’s administration in such areas as immigration, abortion rights or environmental policy, leaders have said.
Lawmakers could also take up measures that make it easier for the state’s child welfare system to have a child’s family member as a legal guardian, eliminate barriers for individuals wanting to change their names and implement regulations on the hemp industry, among other things.
But perhaps the biggest issue awaiting the new General Assembly is how to confront a projected shortfall of nearly $3.2 billion for the next state budget. Complicating the fiscal picture will be deliberations over whether to pass legislation adjusting the state’s pension system; a proposal to consolidate the Chicago area’s transit agencies; and determining whether Chicago’s public schools should get more robust funding than in past years.
And the Chicago Bears and the White Sox could still be looking for public money to build new stadiums.
All of these issues could take months to hash out. Here’s a look at some of the laws that become real with the new year.
Minimum wage hike and other workplace issues
The statewide minimum wage will increase to $15 an hour for workers 18 and older under the final phase of a measure signed by Gov. JB Pritzker in 2019, when the minimum hourly wage was $8.25. Hourly pay has gone up in steps every year since then. In Cook County, the minimum wage for tipped workers goes up to $9 an hour.
Pritzker in December said the state “did it the right way” by gradually increasing the minimum wage.
“I always think it’s a good idea if people can make more money. And, so, I’m in favor of trying to figure out how best to do that,” Pritzker said. “I think raising the minimum wage is something, as you know, I felt strongly about when I came into office. And again, we always are thinking about how do you balance the need for higher wages with the needs that businesses have to hire people and do it affordably.”
Workers at all income levels will also see a major change on LinkedIn and other job boards, as Illinois’ salary transparency law goes into effect. Under a change to the Equal Pay Act, workplaces with 15 employees or more must include a pay scale and benefits in postings for specific jobs starting this year.
“Information is power, and what this attempts to do is to balance, a little bit, the amount of information that an employer has versus what a job applicant or employee has,” said Sharmili Majmudar of the Chicago-based nonprofit Women Employed, which pushed for the legislation.
The change is intended to reduce bias in pay that can negatively affect women and people of color, two groups that have experienced persistent wage gaps.
Illinois Chamber of Commerce President Lou Sandoval said that while some chamber members had ongoing concerns about revealing executive salaries, complying with the new law will be “achievable” for businesses, particularly for mid-level managers and below.
A new child labor law aimed at providing additional workplace protections for children by, among other things, increasing penalties for employers found to be in violation, also takes effect.
Both the salary transparency and child labor laws put Illinois in line with a number of blue states that have recently sought to pass progressive legislation in those areas in the face of an opposing trend of loosening child labor laws in red states including nearby Iowa.
Another new labor measure restricts the ability of employers to hold mandatory employee meetings with anti-union messages. Supporters of the law have said these so-called captive audience meetings have hurt union campaigns. The law, which also would cover meetings on political and religious issues, would not ban those meetings outright, but would prohibit retaliation against employees who choose not to attend.
“Forcing employees to attend meetings about the employer’s political or religious views goes too far,” state Sen. Robert Peters, a Democrat from Chicago who sponsored the measure in the Senate, said in a statement this past summer. “There needs to be a balanced and impartial relationship between employers and employees.”
There are exemptions in the law for required diversity, equity and inclusion training and employers at colleges or universities speaking to their workers about research.
Artificial intelligence
Lawmakers looking into the ways artificial intelligence has been integrated into everyday life passed measures dealing with the technology’s relationship to criminal justice and the entertainment industry.
One of those measures prohibits the use of AI to create child pornography and makes it a felony for violators to be caught with the fake images. State Rep. Jennifer Gong-Gershowitz, the chief House sponsor of the bill, said the new technology has made it increasingly difficult for law enforcement to tell the difference between real and fake pornographic images, and that can be especially dangerous if they depict children.
“We have to have the ability to charge and to bring a case of child pornography without having to distinguish between real images or fake images because the technology is advanced to the point where it’s almost impossible for law enforcement to do that,” said Gong-Gershowitz, a Democrat from Glenview. “And yet, the underlying rationale for charging child pornography in the first place has always been that the nature of this material is harmful. The nature of the material is not different whether it’s depicting a real child or it’s a digitally altered image.”
Gong-Gershowitz sponsored another AI-related measure going into effect that is meant to protect the legal interests of people acting in movies and television, musicians and others in the entertainment business. The law largely prohibits unauthorized digital replicas produced through AI. One example involved movie star Scarlett Johansson and a case in which her voice sounded to many like it was being used by OpenAI even though she had turned down an offer for her voice to be used as a chatbot.
“Technology has advanced to the point where it is relatively simple to essentially steal somebody’s voice or likeness and then utilize it in a way that that person has not consented to,” Gong-Gershowitz said. “The danger here is that very things that make us human and unique, our voices, our face, the things that are essential to our identity, would then be used by somebody without our consent.”
Another AI-related law sponsored by Gong-Gershowitz that went into effect in August prevents entertainers from waiving their rights to preserve their voices or images — even if they’re digitally altered — if they don’t have legal representation.
Criminal justice and law enforcement
The Illinois Law Enforcement Training and Standards Board will be required to develop or approve a course that would assist law enforcement in identifying and appropriately responding to calls involving people with autism. The law also requires police officers to complete this training every three years.
Carrying an illegal gun, a felony charge that has long been referred to as unlawful use of a weapon, will now be known as unlawful possession of a weapon. The reason for the change was to erase possible misconceptions that the person arrested for the crime was being accused of committing more serious illegal acts with the weapon, such as shooting someone.
“This change ensures that people arrested for gun possession are not unfairly characterized in ways that could be prejudicial, and it aligns better with the principle of fairness in our legal system,” said state Rep. Kam Buckner, a Chicago Democrat who sponsored the measure in the House. “It’s about ensuring the language reflects the reality of the offense while maintaining accountability.”
Road rules, state IDs
Several laws taking effect Jan. 1 were championed by Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias, among them a measure laying out a process that will allow residents to acquire digital driver’s licenses and state IDs. About 20 other states have mobile ID programs, according to the secretary of state’s office. However, Giannoulias’ office is still in the planning stages of how to implement the mobile licenses program and could not say when they will be available.
Another new law allows owners of stolen vehicles to request free replacement license plates and registration stickers if they provide a police report or affidavit showing their original plates were stolen. This law comes as auto theft has spiked in recent years in Illinois, particularly in Chicago. In 2022, for example, there were 38,649 thefts statewide, an increase of more than 10,000 cases compared with the previous year, according to Giannoulias’ office.
Another new law expands a nearly 25-year-old measure that requires motorists approaching a stopped emergency vehicle to yield the right of way by moving out of the lane closest to that vehicle. Under the new provisions, drivers must make a lane change and reduce their speed when approaching the scene of an accident, emergency and construction zone.
