As of midnight, Wednesday July 1, Minnesota’s new fiscal year began and with the start of the fiscal year several new state laws officially go into effect.

These new laws impact everything from school requirements, infrastructure improvements and social media restrictions.

Social media warnings

As of July 1, social media platforms will be required to display mental health warnings whenever a user accesses a platform.

The warning label’s text must warn the user of potential mental health impacts from using social media and provide resources to address potential mental health impacts, including the national suicide hotline number and website.

Social media platforms are prohibited from allowing users to disable the warnings. In addition, platforms cannot bury the warning in the terms and conditions of the platform or obscure the visibility of the warning.

Education

Under education, three new laws went into effect July 1, including impacting anonymous threat reporting, mandatory teacher reporting and a ‘ghost students’ student verification law.

As of July 1, all Minnesota school districts and charter schools must begin the process of creating an anonymous threat reporting system. The systems must allow for 24-hour reporting of anonymous tips regarding dangerous, violent, threatening, harmful, or potentially harmful activity that occurs, or is threatened on, school property, or relates to an enrolled student or school personnel.

Schools are allowed to use mobile applications, websites, or toll-free hotlines to meet the 24-hour reporting requirement.

School districts have the option of using the Department of Public Safety’s statewide system for anonymous threat reporting or implementing their own.

Though schools must begin developing a policy this year, districts have until June 30, 2027, to formally adopt an anonymous threat reporting policy and until July 1, 2028, to begin implementing the policy.

The data collected through the threat reporting can be shared among other school districts, the Department of Public Safety, the Department of Education and law enforcement agencies.

The law includes a $4 million appropriation in 2027 for grants to assist schools in developing the system. Another $1 million will be made available to the Department of Public Safety and Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) for staffing and operating costs related to threat assessment and investigations.

Mandatory teacher reporting will also go into effect on July 1. Under this law, police must notify the licensing board when a teacher is criminally charged with an offense that triggers automatic license denial.

The mandatory teacher reporting law is part of a larger anti-grooming bill that will take effect next month on Aug. 1. The crime of “grooming” was added to that list of offenses that would result in an automatic teaching license denial.

Technology upgrades for Human Services

A new law will provide $90 million in funding to modernize local county information technology.

In Minnesota, Medicaid and SNAP programs are administered on the county level through Human Services departments. In some counties, the technology staff used to administer funds for these programs is decades out of date.

In 2025, the federal government mandated that states must develop more stringent oversight of human service programs. Updated technology will be needed in some counties to meet the federal requirement.

The new law establishes a state fund to modernize IT systems used by state agencies, counties and tribal nations administering human service programs.

The $90 million will be appropriated in fiscal year 2027 with $27.94 million going to the Department of Children, Youth, and Families; $15 million to advance fraud prevention and detection; $11.46 million to the Department of Human Services; $11.42 million to Minnesota IT Services; and $10 million for priority upgrades to the IT systems that counties use to administer state human services programs.