Connecticut

Connecticut is a small state with an outsized record of civic innovation, environmental action, and community progress. This archive gathers positive developments from across the state, from policy wins and public health advances to local initiatives making a real difference.

A person repairing a smartphone circuit board for an article about right to repair laws

Right to repair laws have now been introduced in all 50 U.S. states

By / / Good News For Humankind

Right to repair legislation has now been introduced in all 50 U.S. states, marking a historic milestone for the consumer rights movement. In 2025, five states — New York, California, Minnesota, Oregon, and Colorado — passed laws requiring manufacturers to provide independent shops and individual owners with the parts, tools, and documentation needed to fix their own devices and equipment. This matters because it breaks the manufacturer-controlled repair monopoly that has driven up costs, reduced competition, and accelerated electronic waste. The milestone reflects eleven years of broad, bipartisan grassroots organizing — and with active bills in 24 states, momentum is only growing.

Person touching pregnant belly with hands forming a heart, for article on LGBTQ+ fertility coverage

Aetna to start covering IUI in the U.S.

By / / Good news links

Medical insurance company Aetna just announced that it’s going to be providing additional fertility coverage, specifically offering intrauterine insemination (IUI), to all policyholders regardless of sexual orientation or whether they’re partnered. This comes after a settlement agreement from a lawsuit earlier this year which stated that Aetna has to provide such care for LGBTQ+ people. The case, Goidel et al. v. Aetna, was filed in September 2021 and only came to a resolution in May after years of waiting and legal battles.

Person touching pregnant belly with hands forming a heart, for article on LGBTQ+ fertility coverage

Aetna agrees to provide equal fertility coverage for LGBTQ+ people in the U.S. in landmark settlement

By / / Good News For Humankind

LGBTQ+ couples who were charged a “queer tax” of up to $100,000 for fertility treatment just won a major shift at Aetna, including a $2 million fund to reimburse families who paid out of pocket. The settlement ends a policy that required same-sex couples to fund a year of treatments themselves before coverage kicked in, while heterosexual couples qualified after a simple conversation. It started with Emma Goidel and Ilana Caplan, who drained their savings through multiple rounds of IUI and IVF before suing under the Affordable Care Act’s ban on sex discrimination in health care. Their win creates a template other insurers can follow, and a legal path other families can walk, toward fertility care that treats every family as worth building.

Commencement cap held in the air, for article on Yale Prison Education Initiative

Yale, University of New Haven partnership celebrates first degrees awarded to inmates

By / / Good News For Humankind

Yale Prison Education Initiative just celebrated its first-ever commencement, with seven students receiving associate degrees inside a Connecticut prison in June 2023. Four of them had been taking classes since the program’s very first cohort in 2018, when only 12 students were enrolled — meaning these graduates literally helped build the program they were graduating from. The ceremony at MacDougall-Walker Correctional Institution included caps, gowns, families, and Governor Ned Lamont, who responded to each graduate’s speech by name and later called it the most moving graduation he’d ever attended. One graduate is now pursuing his bachelor’s degree and planning a career as a defense attorney. It’s a quiet but powerful reminder that educational equity, done right, looks like rigorous partnership — not charity.