Coronavirus aid, police reform dominate new U.S. laws for 2021
Virus-related laws include those offering help to essential workers, boosting unemployment benefits and requiring time off for sick employees.
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A protester holds a sign that reads Defund Police during a rally for the late George Floyd outside Barclays Center, in New York in October. [ JOHN MINCHILLO | AP ]
Published Dec. 30, 2020
Responses to the coronavirus pandemic and police brutality dominated legislative sessions in 2020, leading to scores of new laws that will take effect in the new year.
Virus-related laws include those offering help to essential workers, boosting unemployment benefits and requiring time off for sick employees. A resolution in Alabama formally encouraged fist-bumping over handshakes.
TRENTON, N.J. (AP) COVID-19 altered the daily routine in New Jersey in 2020 and sewed a thread through the state's other top stories. Homes were transformed into offices and classrooms..
With salons closed, Jersey’s “big hair” grew longer and grayer.
All the restrictions Gov. Phil Murphy and his health team ordered sought to stem the infection rate and deaths. And the Democrat wasn’t shy to cop a New Jersey attitude by calling violators “knuckleheads.”
As the year ended, there was hope the stenciled, socially distanced footprints in stores and elsewhere would lead to a return to normal. Along the way, other stories shared attention with the pandemic: Voters and lawmakers cleared the way for recreational marijuana; a federal judge’s family was shattered by a gun-toting lawyer with a grudge; and the justices on the U.S. Supreme Court weighed in on a classic episode of political payback, New Jersey-style.
Governor Charlie Baker also sided with antiabortion opponents of the bill, who suggested the language of the measure would allow more late abortions than the activists who championed it were acknowledging.
House rejects Bakerâs changes to abortion measure
By Stephanie Ebbert Globe Staff,Updated December 16, 2020, 4:24 p.m.
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A supermajority, 107 members, voted against the governorâs changes, while 49 voted for them.
âThe House today reaffirmed its long-standing commitment to protecting reproductive rights in Massachusetts under threat by changes in the makeup of the US Supreme Court,â House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo said in a statement. âThe House acted to keep intact those provisions in Massachusetts that safeguard reproductive choices for all.â
The Democratic-led Legislature included the measure in the stateâs $45.9 billion budget bill in order
to guarantee abortion access in Massachusetts, in anticipation of national changes to abortion rights under a newly conservative Supreme Court. The language would codify into state law the right to an abortion, which has been guaranteed by the courtâs ruling in Roe v. Wade since 1973.