With the new year comes an array of new laws slated to take effect across the country throughout 2025 on issues like artificial intelligence, legacy college admissions and surgical care for transgender youth.
More than half a dozen states will have new data privacy and consumer protections, while federal regulations will require air travelers to present compliant licenses or identification cards to fly domestically.
After a busy election cycle, state legislatures are ready to tackle yet another year of hot-button political issues, soon under a Trump administration. Here are some of the laws that will ring in 2025:
Guardrails against AI
Two states will begin to regulate uses of AI with the aim of mitigating the potential harms of the rapidly growing technology.
In Illinois, it will become illegal to knowingly distribute audio- or visual-based digital replicas of individuals created through generative AI without their consent. The act also applies a 50-year prohibition on the use of a digital replica of an individual after their death if they did not previously consent to such use.
There are still certain instances to which the act does not apply, such as parody, or when there is a political, public interest, educational or newsworthy value to the digital replica — as long as it is not falsely presented as authentic.
The Recording Academy was a vocal proponent of the law since its introduction in February, championing its passage as a victory in protecting artists and creators against AI. Illinois state Rep. Jennifer Gong-Gershowitz, who introduced the bill, said the motivation for the legislation came from cases of the unauthorized use of artists’ identities in AI-generated music.
“I have seen increasing concern from lawmakers, really spurred by concern by our constituents, about the dangers posed by AI, the availability of AI as a tool, both in positive ways, but also in ways that can infringe on somebody’s right to privacy, or in fact, to really steal their identity,” Gong-Gershowitz said.
Another law in Illinois addresses AI-generated child pornography, prohibiting the use of the technology to create obscene material of a real or purported child. The law also separately forbids the nonconsensual dissemination of sexually explicit digitized depictions, which is a Class 4 felony.
“What we wanted to do was to ensure that law enforcement could prosecute cases of child pornography without the necessity of proving that the image is of an actual child,” Gong-Gershowitz said. “The goal here is to ensure that we don’t normalize violence against children.”
Meanwhile, California is tackling the use of AI in Hollywood. One law will require informed consent by performers in the entertainment industry to replicate their voice or likeness with AI, while a second law will extend the protection to digital replicas produced within 70 years of a personality’s death, with a few exceptions.
States are taking the lead in filling gaps from the lack of federal legislation on AI, Gong-Gershowitz said. She emphasized the need for balance between supporting innovation in the United States and ensuring “new technologies like next-generation AI continue to serve humanity’s interest.”
Data privacy and consumer protections
Eight states will have privacy laws take effect this year: Delaware, Iowa, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Maryland, Minnesota and Tennessee.
The laws impose stricter obligations on businesses handling personal data and grant consumers the right to more transparency on how their data is collected, used and shared, according to Michelle Hon Donovan, a partner at the law firm Duane Morris LLP. Not all companies will be required to comply, as each state has its own requirements and thresholds, such as Nebraska, which exempts small businesses.
Maryland’s is the most restrictive of the new laws, including a clause that limits businesses to collecting personal data only when it is “reasonably necessary” to perform a service or provide a good. The law also outright prohibits the sale of sensitive data.
Donovan — who specializes in privacy and data security — said that before 2020, there were few laws across the country addressing privacy except for online privacy laws in a handful of states. Federal laws mostly focus on certain industries, she added, like the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.
But now, the eight states with laws taking effect in 2025 join a growing list of 19 total states that have passed comprehensive privacy laws.
“We expect more laws to be passed next year, so this is probably only the beginning,” Donovan said.
California to bar legacy admissions
Legacy applicants in California will no longer get a leg up in the college admissions process after September 2025.
A law in the state will ban legacy and donor preferences at private, nonprofit institutions, eliminating favoritism given to applicants with familial or monetary connections to the schools. The University of California system eliminated legacy admissions in 1998.
Signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in October, the law requires all private colleges and universities in California to submit an annual report to disclose compliance. Its passage came after the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action admissions policies in 2023 and an FBI investigation uncovered a college entrance exam cheating scheme in 2019 involving dozens of wealthy parents, including Hollywood actors.
“It’s all about fairness,” then-Assembly member Phil Ting previously told NBC News. “You want people to work hard and achieve access to education because they’ve worked hard and they’re really the most qualified students, not because they have wealthy parents or wealthy families who are donors. This is about making sure we’re leveling the playing field.”
The law will not be reflected in incoming classes until fall 2026.
New Hampshire’s ban on gender-transition surgeries for minors
A new law in New Hampshire will prevent transgender minors from receiving transition-related surgery and prohibit physicians from referring patients for out-of-state procedures.
The law does not affect other forms of gender-affirming care, such as puberty blockers and hormone replacement therapy. New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu signed the health care measure in July alongside a separate bill barring some transgender students from competing on school sports teams, although a federal judge partially blocked its enforcement.
Sununu said in a statement that the law will protect the health and safety of children in the state by ensuring they do not undergo “life altering, irreversible surgeries.” Chris Erchull, a senior staff attorney at the New England-based GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders, or GLAD, said decisions surrounding medical treatments are “very heavy and serious” but belong between doctors, patients and, in the case of minors, parents.
“The legislature is opening a door into regulating medical care for transgender people, singling them out for a different standard than for other people to target a procedure that doesn’t even happen in New Hampshire that, of course, is very, very rare,” Erchull said.
Research from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health has suggested that gender-affirming surgeries are rarely performed on transgender youth. Erchull raised particular concern about the law forbidding referrals, which he said “deprives families of the opportunities to even consult with other people to get information that they need to make the appropriate decisions for their families.”
New Hampshire is one of 26 states limiting or banning surgical care for transgender youth, according to the Movement Advancement Project, an LGBTQ rights think tank. Erchull said New Hampshire, a state in which Republicans control the governorship and both houses of the legislature, in the past five years had mostly resisted legislative efforts targeting LGBTQ+ people until now.
“It does mark a significant shift in what’s happening on the ground in New Hampshire,” Erchull said. “I’m hearing from families who are talking about leaving the state. I’m hearing from families who are scared about sending their kids to school because a lot of people are questioning whether transgender people are safe any longer in the state of New Hampshire.”
The Supreme Court is currently considering a challenge to a Tennessee law that restricts gender transition treatments for minors, although the surgical ban is not an issue before the justices. The conservative-majority court seems poised to uphold the law, which will have sweeping implications for youth access to puberty blockers and hormone therapy across the country.
National ID regulations
Beginning May 7, 2025, anyone age 18 or older will need to carry a Real ID-compliant driver’s license or identification card to fly domestically and access certain federal facilities.
Air travelers will be turned away at airport security checkpoints if they fail to present either identification that meets the Real ID Act’s enhanced standards or another acceptable alternative, such as a passport.
The Department of Homeland Security has delayed the deadline for Real ID enforcement multiple times due to a lack of full state compliance and the Covid-19 pandemic, which made it more difficult for people to get the new IDs at their state motor vehicle departments.
Congress passed the Real ID Act in 2005 based on a recommendation from the 9/11 Commission. Under the act, state-issued licenses or identification cards must also feature anti-counterfeiting technology and require record checks for issuance.
All Real ID-compliant cards will have a star marking on the upper portion of the ID.
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