State lawmakers passed more than 400 new laws out of Springfield that are set to go into effect in 2025.
“Many of the new laws will impact the day-to-day lives of the state’s residents, including some that are truly lifesaving in scope,” said Teri Ross, executive director of the nonprofit Illinois Legal Aid Online. “The new laws cover a wide range of issues, such as employment, education, child protection, mental health support, law enforcement, tenant rights and living wages.”
Here are the details on a few of the hundreds of laws and amendments set for 2025.
Transparent Job Postings
An amendment to the Illinois Equal Pay Act means that companies will be required to include a pay range and benefits information with any job listing.
“When somebody says salary and all it says is ‘depends on experience,’ that’s no longer allowed,” said Ross. “This law applies to, I should say, employers with 15 or more employees, right? So, if it’s a very small business, then there is no, this law doesn’t apply to them.”
The “benefits” portion of the law means information like a bonus model, 401k contributions and insurance details also have to be included.
Ross says this law will be enforced by the Illinois Department of Labor and violations result in fines. Enforcement extends to third party platforms like Indeed and LinkedIn.
“[The law] puts the onus on the employer to make sure the information is there, right?” said Ross. “So if the posting goes up and the information isn’t there, it either needs to come down or you need to contact the third party platform provider and see if they can correct it.”
Ross says, hopefully, the law will help save time for both job seekers and employers, avoiding interviews and employment processes ended by mismatched expectations.
Landlord Retaliation
House Bill 4768 replaces a law called the Retaliatory Eviction Act, Ross says the new law is broader in its definition of retaliation than just eviction and provides a clearer process for renters to seek relief.
Some of those additional retaliatory actions could include lawsuits, rent increases and denial of maintenance or other services guaranteed by a lease.
Ross says the most common scenario covered by the law is a landlord taking one of these paths after a tenant asks for a building inspection or reports inadequate living conditions. The previous law, she says, was light on specific enforcement.
“[The tenant] can ask for damages. You can ask for punitive damages. You can ask to get the apartment or house back if you’ve already been removed from it somehow,” said Ross. “So it does provide for these remedies that the other act didn’t.”
Ross says this law doesn’t radically change the landlord and tenant relationship in Illinois.
“Although, hopefully, it has the impact of, if there are landlords who are not acting in good faith and don’t want to fix things, especially as it impacts habitability, hopefully this will help the landlord to pause and say ‘maybe it’s time for me to make those repairs or to get some help,” she said.
Uninsured Patient Billing at Hospitals
Senate Bill 2442 is an amendment to the Fair Patient Billing Act, which requires that a hospital cannot bill an uninsured patient for care without first checking whether the patient is eligible for public health insurance. If the patient is, the hospital has to provide them with some written form of information on how to apply.
Ross says there are still some unanswered questions about this new requirement, specifically when it comes to how hospitals plan to screen for eligibility. There is a deadline, approximately thirty days, for the hospital to check for eligibility and put the information in patients’ hands.
“The practice is very different according to hospital network by hospital network, right?” she said. “So, some have very efficient and comprehensive processes that are in place and others, less so.”
Overall though, Ross expects the new legislation to slow down the process of unpaid bills being sent to collection agencies and provide uninsured patients some time to explore their options.
“I think it’s really more, again, of an administrative burden,” said Ross. “I think in terms of how we will assess, what’s the process for assessing whether this might be somebody who qualifies for public health insurance?”
Child Labor
Senate Bill 3646 replaces Illinois’ former child labor law with a litany of additions to strengthen and specify the legislation. Some of those changes include more specifics on hours that a minor can work, how that differs in different job types, how it varies based on whether school is in session or if it’s a weekend and breaks down minors in different age range categories.
“It’s a work permit process, effectively, and that work permit is regulated by the school that the child or the teen goes to,” said Ross. “It’s kind of an interesting process. It does prohibit things during the school year, like working part 8 p.m.”
Some jobs are exempt from the requirements, jobs that Ross describes as “standard youth work.”
“Paper routes and caddying at a golf course, babysitting, working at park district camps, for example, all those kinds of things are exempted,” she said.
Corporal Punishment in Schools
Another law related to the well-being of children is House Bill 4175, which bans the use of corporal or physical punishment in all Illinois schools.
Ross says, specifically, this bill is an amendment to a ban that’s existed since 1994.
“What this does is, it just expands the law to cover private schools as well,” said Ross.
The bill does make some exceptions for actions that could be considered physical punishment in very specific circumstances.
“The big one, I think, is if a child is in danger of harming themself,” said Ross. “Then it does allow for proper restraint so that that can be prevented or, at least mitigated.”
Ross says some of the discussion before passing the bill centered on punishment in a student athlete or extracurricular sports context. Ultimately, she says, lawmakers decided that, for example, having to do wind sprints or chin ups for being late to a practice would not qualify as corporal punishment under this law.
Artificial Intelligence
Two new laws in 2025 deal with illegal uses of artificial intelligence. House Bill 4623 expands on existing child pornography laws to include A.I. generated content and also bans sharing sexually explicit images created with A.I. without consent. House Bill 4875 aims to keep people from having their face, voice, likeness or intellectual property replicated with A.I. to use for commercial purposes without their knowledge.
“What we see come through, particularly in new laws or amended laws, happens because someone has found a loophole, or there’s something that’s vague or not included explicitly in the law and that usually comes out through the media, right?” said Ross. “And the court of public opinion calls up their senators and their legislators and says ‘there ought to be a law for this.’”
While House Bill 4623 expands a definition to make the creation and distribution of the illicit content criminal, Ross says House Bill 4875 provides a remedy for people to go to the platform using their content and say “this is mine, this is my intellectual property and you can’t use it.”
Fentanyl Test Strips
Senate Bill 3350 amends the Substance Abuse Disorder Act, with a goal of creating programs to distribute fentanyl test strips and prevent overdoses. Ross says this law is looking to build on pilot programs around the state.
“There’s a crisis, right?” she said. “This is one way for us as a society to try to address the crisis in terms of fentanyl use and death.”
The programs could look similar to those developed in recent years to provide Narcan to a greater number of people for little to no cost.
