Meet The Mixed Bag Of New State Laws Taking Effect In 2016
By Mae Rice in News on Dec 31, 2015 4:20PM
It’s not just the vaping tax that starts on Jan. 1. More than 200 new laws go into effect on New Year’s Day. You can read the full list over at ABC7; for now, here are a few of the most interesting new laws. We promise to get through this whole article without making a joke how we passed a new state pie but not a new state budget—or wait, crap.
1. The law requiring schools to have carbon monoxide detectors. How have we just passed this? Do our lawmakers all latently hate children?
2. The law that allows the statute of limitations time period to pause when sexual assault evidence is being collected, submitted and analyzed. This is genuinely wonderful, given our state’s backlog of still-untested rape kits—we had 1,600 as of this summer, NBC reported.
3. The law that requires people who intentionally falsely call 911 to reimburse the local government for all costs. I choose to believe this law happened because the entire state legislature had a silent rave where they listened to the Reply All episode about swatting.
4. The law that prohibits gay conversion therapy and referring to homosexuality as an illness when advertising conversion therapy service. There is nothing bad about this law, except that we did not make it hundreds of years ago.
5. The law making pumpkin pie Illinois’ official State Pie. Congratulations to a totally fine type of pie!