New laws affect renters, workers, ice fishers

ST. PAUL, Minn. (FOX 9) - Minnesota's newest laws took effect on Jan. 1, affecting people who rent, people looking for work, and people out on the ice this winter.

The minimum wage went up in most of the state and mandatory paid sick leave started, but another employment protection got less attention even though a local professor has done the research proving it’s effective.

Job interviews in Minnesota can’t include an employer asking for your previous salary as of Jan. 1. The idea is to narrow the gender and racial pay gap and Dr. Moshe Barach at the University of Minnesota has studied how salary-blind hiring impacts employers. 

"They interview more workers, they ask them more questions, and the questions that they ask them are much more sort substantive questions," said Dr. Moshe Barach.

His research shows that salary-blind employers interviewed and hired workers with lower past wages, and they usually paid those workers more. In other states with similar laws, there’s evidence of a closing gender wage gap.

Minnesota also added several new tenant protections, including requiring landlords who control the thermostat to keep it at 68 degrees or higher during the winter months.

It has to get a lot colder than that for the new ice litter law to come into play.

The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources will be watching to make sure people on frozen lakes and rivers immediately put their waste into some kind of container.

That goes for trash and biological waste.

"We've had issues in the past where people are either discharging their septic from their permanent fish houses or otherwise leaving sewage on the lakes, and ultimately that ends up in our waters and ended up washing up on shore," said Maj. Robert Gorecki, a Department of Natural Resources enforcement operations manager.

Ice litter violations are now petty misdemeanors with a minimum fine of $100, but the DNR is mostly focused on education during this first season the law is in effect.

The state also now has a red flag law allowing a short list of people to ask a court for a protection order to get guns out of the hands of someone posing a significant risk of harm.