After thousands opposed controversial CT bills, will they pass anyway? What leaders are saying

Hartford Courant – Sunday, March 15, 2026
By Christopher Keating

After the longest public hearings in recent years, the state legislature will be voting in the coming weeks on the three most controversial issues of the legislative session: homeschooling, vaccines, and gun safety.

Democrats and Republicans clashed bitterly over the issues last week as hundreds of concerned parents and advocates traveled to the state Capitol complex to oppose the measures in front of three different committees on the same day.

The bills call for strengthening the state’s control over recommended vaccines, tightening oversight on homeschooling families, and banning convertible pistols that allow a handgun to be converted to fire rapidly near the speed of a machine gun.

The next step is that lawmakers are facing committee deadlines within the next two weeks, and they are expecting to cast the final votes before the legislative session ends in one of the shortest sessions in recent history.

Senate President Pro Tempore Martin Looney, a New Haven Democrat, said that top leaders will be managing the busy legislative calendar to make sure that the issues are decided before time runs out.

“Yes, I’m confident that these are all issues that will be voted upon by May 6,” Looney told The Courant. “Everything moves quickly in a short session. The things that we’re interested in we have to keep moving.”

Democrats who control the legislature said the bills provide reasonable protections for health and public safety, while Republican opponents said the measures are a serious threat to medical, educational and religious freedom. They could not agree procedurally over how long the public hearings should last and could not agree on the merits over which ideas should be deemed as extreme. In all-day marathon hearings, testimony on homeschooling went through the night and eventually ended at nearly 5 a.m. as concerned parents wanted to make sure that their voices were heard.

Sen. Rob Sampson, one of the most conservative members of the legislature, said that he and others are simply fighting for basic American rights.

“The right of parents to direct the education of their children,” he said. “The right of families to make medical decisions with their doctors. The right of law-abiding citizens to exercise their Second Amendment rights. And the right of the public to come and testify to their government.”

He added, “These are not extreme ideas. They are fundamental liberties.”

Democrats, in turn, said they are working to make children safer after two high-profile child abuse cases in Waterbury and New Britain in which the children had reportedly been withdrawn from public schools. They also said they are trying to maintain high vaccine rates, which in Connecticut are currently the highest in the nation, so that children are safe in their elementary schools.

Republicans

Despite their strong opposition, some Republicans conceded that all three bills might pass.

Former New Britain mayor Erin Stewart, who is running for governor, came to the Capitol complex during the hearings and said she believes the bills will be approved by the Democratic-dominated legislature. The hundreds who testified, she said, will be essentially ignored.

“My prediction is that they will all get through,” Stewart told The Courant. “Unfortunately, that’s my prediction. If history has been any indicator of how the Democratic leadership functions, we know they don’t care what people here have to say — and they’re going to do what they want to do, regardless. For me, as disappointing and as sad as that is, I think that they’ll all get rammed through as is.”

The better idea, Stewart said, is to simply drop all of the bills and proceed with the status quo.

“Just get rid of it,” Stewart said on the day of the hearings. “The common theme is government overreaching into our personal lives, into our families, into our bodies. My body, my choice. Sound familiar? Oh, but not when it comes to certain things. The hypocrisy is astounding to me. It is so frustrating because you have so many people here who are amazing Connecticut residents, and you know what they’re going to be told today? You don’t matter.”

Despite his passion against the bills, Sampson agrees that all of them might be approved in the Democratic-dominated chambers.

“I think that all of it could happen under the right circumstances, and I don’t want to see any of it happen,” Sampson told The Courant. “So I want to keep the pressure on.”

Homeschooling

Legislators have been pushing for more oversight of homeschoolers after two shocking cases of alleged child abuse in Waterbury and New Britain that generated major headlines, lawsuits against DCF and criminal cases. In Waterbury, an emaciated man who was rescued from a fire said that he had purposely set the blaze to attract attention because he had been imprisoned for two decades after being pulled out of public school as a child.

In a second case, an 11-year-old girl named Jacqueline “Mimi” Torres-Garcia, who was found dead behind an abandoned house in New Britain, weighed only 27 pounds at the time of her death. Ruling that the death was a homicide, the chief medical examiner’s office said she died from fatal child abuse with starvation.

Gov. Ned Lamont said he is highly sympathetic to homeschooling parents who have “extraordinary love for their kids,” but he added that the legislature needs to strike a balance for the safety of children who are removed from the public schools.

“I think I’m sympathetic to the idea that we don’t want anybody dropping through the cracks,” Lamont told reporters in Meriden at an unrelated event. “We’ve had a couple of terrible, isolated instances over the last few months, and if we had some way to just check on those kids on a regular basis, they’d be alive today.”

The state education commissioner and local superintendents have raised questions about the bill, saying it would require the local districts to essentially monitor homeschooling students under a costly unfunded mandate.

State education Commissioner Charlene Russell-Tucker said that 1,800 children left public schools for homeschooling in the last fiscal year, along with another 3,700 who departed public schools to attend private schools. The plan would involve one-time costs of about $150,000, plus ongoing costs of about $400,000 per year — neither of which have been included in Gov. Ned Lamont’s proposed budget of $28.7 billion for the fiscal year that starts on July 1.

Fran Rabinowitz, a former superintendent in Bridgeport and Hamden who now heads the state superintendents’ association, said qualified staff would need to be hired in order to evaluate the level of instruction.

“As written, the bill places substantial new administrative and oversight responsibilities on local and regional boards of education, including requirements to collect and track intent-to-educate forms, follow up with families who do not submit required documentation, and review demonstrations of equivalent instruction such as portfolios, assessments, or other academic evidence,” Rabinowitz said in written testimony. “Yet the bill does not require any in-person contact with the student, leaving districts responsible for monitoring educational progress without ever seeing or interacting with the child. These responsibilities represent a fundamental shift in the mission of public school districts.”

Sampson, other Republicans, and parents all questioned the concept of “equivalent instruction” that is specifically mentioned in the bill.

“In my view, equivalent to what?” Sampson asked. “What they’re doing is they’re misleading people to think that somehow homeschooling is inadequate compared to public schools. There are some very fine public schools in the state that produce excellent results, but there are some pretty poor ones as well. … Do you want to be equivalent to New Canaan, that has excellent schools, or do we want to be equivalent to New Britain?”

Vaccines

Hundreds of parents also came to the Capitol complex to talk about vaccines and the power of the state health commissioner on the issue.

While opponents were skeptical of new mandates, the state health commissioner, Dr. Manisha Juthani, testified repeatedly during the public hearing that there would be no new mandates.

“The overarching goal of this bill is to maintain the status quo,” Juthani told legislators. “This bill in no way institutes any new vaccine mandates for children or adults. … The main goal is to provide continued access to vaccines. … No mandates.”

Since the state eliminated the religious exemption in 2021 for all new students, more students have been receiving medical exemptions than in the past. Students who already had a religious exemption in kindergarten through grade 12 were “grandfathered” in and could maintain their exemption but no new ones were allowed.

Based on statistics from the state public health department, the number of medical exemptions has skyrocketed from 71 in the 2023-24 year to 245 the following year and then 466 in 2025-26.

But state Rep. Anne Dauphinais, a Danielson Republican who is outspoken on the issue, said that some exemptions have been blocked.

“Dozens and dozens of people have told me they have been denied medical exemptions,” Dauphinais told Juthani during the hearing.

A court battle over the removal of the religious exemption is also ongoing and so the issue remains unresolved.

The vast majority of parents, state Rep. Matthew Blumenthal of Stamford said, want to know that enough children will be vaccinated so that they reach the level of “herd immunity” and their children will not get sick when they attend school.

“It’s very reasonable for the average person to be able to expect that there is going to herd immunity in their child’s classroom to highly communicable, highly dangerous diseases that have been functionally eliminated for much of the world,” Blumenthal told The Courant in an interview. “They shouldn’t have to wonder whether their child is going to be safe in school.”

Democrats, Blumenthal said, have no ill will against gun sellers, homeschoolers, or parents with strong beliefs on vaccines.

“We have to design a system that works for everyone,” Blumenthal said. “That’s our obligation. That’s the will of the people of the state of Connecticut, who have elected large majorities of Democrats to the legislature.”

Looney said the state has made major strides since the religious exemption was removed in 2021.

“Our state has now achieved a 98.2% vaccination rate among (enrolled) kindergartners, which is the highest in the nation and well above the 95% threshold that we need for herd immunity,” Looney said. “That has been a huge success.”

The vaccination rates vary sharply, according to public records for the 2024-25 school year, including 100% fully vaccinated at the Tootin’ Hills elementary school in West Simsbury and 98% at the Noah Wallace and East Farms elementary schools in Farmington. The Bugbee, Duffy, Smith Stern, and Webster Hill elementary schools in West Hartford all have 100% rates. At the lowest end, only 58% are fully vaccinated at the Beardsley School in Bridgeport. Some private schools have lower vaccination rates and many are unreported.

Public hearings

Aside from the merits of the bills, Republicans and Democrats argued bitterly last week over the length of public hearings.

Sen. Eric Berthel, a Watertown Republican and the ranking member of the education committee that debated homeschooling, blasted Democrats over the amount of time allotted for testimony.

“The majority party have chosen to demonstrate that they will silence you if given the opportunity,” Berthel said. “It is just a constant abuse of power by the majority Democrats in this building, and it needs to stop. The way that it stops is in November. If you are represented by one of these people that have silenced your voice, do not send them back to this building. Don’t let them come back.”

Looney, though, disagreed with the Republican position on the hearings.

“That really is outrageous posturing because Connecticut has the most accommodating rules in the whole country about access to public hearings by the public,” Looney told The Courant. “For instance, in New York state, public hearings are not even required on every bill, and not everyone who wants to testify gets to testify. In Massachusetts, only those who are invited are permitted to testify. In Rhode Island, again, public testimony is only admitted at the discretion of the committee chair. In California, everyone who wants to testify does not necessarily get to testify in person. We are among the most open and accessible states in terms of citizen participation in our public hearing process.”

Guns

For hours, proponents and opponents testified over Gov. Ned Lamont’s proposal to ban pistols that can be converted easily into automatic machine guns. With relative ease, convertible pistols with “a simple Lego-sized switch,” known as Glock switches, can be transformed into highly powerful weapons, police said.

Lamont’s four-page measure, known as House Bill 5043, would outlaw the future sale, manufacturing, purchase, and importation of the convertible pistols in Connecticut.

Holly Sullivan, president of the pro-gun Connecticut Citizens Defense League, said the bill is unnecessary.

“Aftermarket devices, sometimes referred to as Glock switches, are used by criminals to convert certain firearms from semiautomatic fire to automatic fire,” Sullivan said. “Doing this is a federally prohibited crime. Instead of focusing on illegal actions, this year’s newest gun control initiative seeks to ban countless commonly owned firearms used by Connecticut’s permitted and law-abiding residents. Many of these type of firearms have been owned for decades and present no new risk or dangers. However, the Governor and majority party in the legislature once again demonstrate that they have no meaningful plan to solve crime in our cities but instead target the average citizen.”

But Blumenthal said that Glock, a private company with millions of dollars in sales, has the ability to resolve the situation.

“Glock, one of the biggest and most sophisticated manufacturers of firearms in the world, has a design of their pistol that allows it to be readily converted by hobbyists with very little technical know-how into a submachine gun that can fire 1,200 rounds a minute,” said Blumenthal, who has studied gun issues for years on the judiciary committee. “You don’t need to be a gun expert to understand why that is highly dangerous and irresponsible. For any other product that was that dangerous – you would have a swift reaction, both on the part of the public and the part of the company, which is product liability and other lawsuits.”

Blumenthal added, “We don’t have a problem with Glock handguns. We want them to be safe and obey our laws and not be readily convertible into machine pistols. If they make that fix, then there won’t be a problem. So that’s what we want. We want them to fix their handgun design so that it is not easily converted into a submachine gun that skirts all our laws and is dangerous to our police, dangerous to bystanders, and dangerous to everyone.”

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