📜📣End of Session Updates: My Legislative Wins

Dear Neighbor,

I’ve sent you a couple of messages so far unpacking the legislative session that just wrapped up. The first took a deep dive into the budget; the second was about some important legislation we passed this year.

Now I want to let you know what bills I worked on — which passed, and which we'll keep working on this fall. Today, let's focus on the wins.

Five bills I sponsored are headed to the Governor's desk. The one I think is most impactful is HB 2161, which will protect family caregivers from discrimination at work. You may recall I sent a detailed explainer about this one back in March, in which I gave this real-world example:

A woman was going up for a promotion, and her boss said to her, “Well, it seems like you’ve got a lot going on at home with your four kids, so it’s probably not a good time for you to take on more responsibilities at work.” The boss goes on to give the job to another male employee… who also happens to have four kids at home. (They just didn’t ask him about family life when talking about the promotion!) So in this case the female employee is able to sue on the basis of gender discrimination. But if they’d given the position to a woman with no kids, for instance, it would have been perfectly legal.

Our bill puts a stop to that. It creates the strongest protections in the country against this kind of discrimination, making sure that employees are evaluated on the merits of their work, whether they show up on time and do a good job, and not on whatever family responsibilities the boss might assume they have.

I also passed HB 4768, which will protect tenants from retaliation by their landlords. All too often, tenants complain about unsafe or illegal conditions in their apartment, only to find an eviction notice on their door the next week. This bill provides legal protections for tenants who report health and safety violations in their unit.

SB 426 is a transformational concept for public safety and re-entry. We know that almost everyone who goes to prison will return to community. But too often, they haven't gotten much support while behind bars, and they come home with few opportunities and get pulled back into old patterns. This bill creates a new pathway for young adults. We'll repurpose a nearly empty juvenile facility into an Emerging Adult Center for incarcerated 18-22 year olds who don't have a high school degree. They'll get their diploma, get job training, and prepare for re-entry. We believe this can help break the cycle of recidivism and get these young men on a more positive path.

Two more bills I passed this year: SB 3288 will expand the possibilities for mental health research in Illinois. Right now, we have conflicting laws that make it very hard for researchers to get de-identified patient data, so this bill will bring our state's laws into conformity with HIPAA and make this research easier to conduct. And HB 3763 will allow employees easier access to their personnel file, which will help them in cases when they may have been wrongfully terminated.

Expect one more update from me on Monday: the projects that didn't pass, that we'll keep working on next year!

Sincerely,
Will

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