2025 Session Summary

2025 Successes

The JRLC’s priorities were largely successful during the 2025 legislative session; we accomplished two of our four primary priorities. We are very pleased at the bipartisan support all of our legislative priorities for 2025 received, save our priority on Maternal Health and Mortality which requires more legwork to put together a viable bill. With the financial uncertainty our state is facing, we are pleased to have had such a successful session.

Below is an overview of the JRLC’s successes in 2025:

Widowed Veteran’s Spouse Education Reimbursement Bill

The final Veteran’s Policy and Finance bill included the JRLC's provision allowing the widowed spouses of veterans to keep their education reimbursement benefits if they remarry. That bill has been sent to Governor Walz to be signed. More military families in Minnesota will be able to afford higher education now because of this bill, and we are so grateful that this measure passed.

Online Gambling Expansion

The online sports gambling proposal did not advance in either body this session, which we believe reflects an increase in public concern about how this expansion would impact young people and individuals prone to compulsive gambling behaviors in Minnesota. We are pleased that these issues are being discussed more broadly. In previous years, it seemed that a significant majority of legislators were indifferent to the potential harm of this proposal, and that is not the case now. This is a success!

Child Tax Credit Expansion

The only JRLC priority that remained uncertain at the end of the session was the status of the Child Tax Credit (CTC) expansion. While the CTC expansion bill the JRLC worked for did not receive a hearing in the House or Senate during session, several similar proposals were heard that would increase the CTC in different ways. The proposal that made it into the House tax proposal during the regular session would have provided a "baby bonus" of $100 for each baby born to a family or individual qualifying for the CTC in the tax year the child was born. This bonus wouldn't have come into effect until people file their 2028 tax returns and was down from the original "baby bonus" proposal of $400 per baby. Ultimately, no additions to the Child Tax Credit was passed in the special session. However, it is significant “win” that even though there is a looming state budget deficit, the existing Child Tax Credit was not cut.