In the flurry of late-session business before the General Assembly's 12:01 a.m. deadline Thursday, the legislation, which passed the House in a bipartisan 117-31 vote on April 27, was ordered onto the foot of the Senate calendar two days later, essentially putting the bill on legislative life support.
Under the bill, school districts would have been given the freedom to develop policies on the use of cellphones in emergencies and health incidents, and choose how students would store their phone, whether in pouches, administrative offices or backpacks. There would be no penalties for noncompliance.
"There's a lot of business between now and the end of session," state Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff, D-Norwalk, said in an interview on the Senate floor, Tuesday night.
The fate of the bill — which would have created a statewide, K-12 bell-to-bell cellphone ban — represented the larger split on phone bans occurring across the country between a growing wave of policymakers attempting to rid distractions in the classroom and protectors of local education control.
"There are some folks on both sides of the aisle who feel like this is a better decision made at the local level because conversations can be had with regard to doctors' notes and dealing with emergencies or other types of parental concerns," Duff said. He said other issues better left locally include the storage of student phones during the day.
But some legislators — as well as some school district officials and local leaders — were hesitant to go as far as a total ban. Gov. Ned Lamont pushed for the statewide ban.
"There is strong evidence that this bill would support improved emotional well-being, attention, engagement, and performance for our students, and we heard from many districts who wanted to see this done at the state level," a spokesperson for the governor said.
Duff, however, said he favored local school boards getting to make the decision.
Although legislators may have differed on what exactly a cellphone ban should look like, many of them had agreed earlier in the session that getting cellphones out of the classroom was a priority.
State Rep. Jennifer Leeper, D-Fairfield, co-chair of the Education Committee and a stanch proponent of the bill, said it was "a shame" it wouldn't come to fruition, and that she wasn't aware that legislators had reservations about the bill.
"I wish someone would have told me there were concerns, because, you know, that would have changed how we negotiated," Leeper said in an interview on the House floor Wednesday.
Speaker of the House Matt Ritter, D-Hartford and House Majority Leader Jason Rojas, D-East Hartford, said reasons for the demise of bills vary at the end of a legislative session. Ritter says he understands both Leeper's goal to pass the bill and Duff's support of local school control.
"Sometimes, especially as we get later in the session, the tension, this is sort of what happens," Ritter said Wednesday morning in his State Capitol office. "If people can a very rational argument, which the other side I think is very rational, I can't be upset. It may not make my chair happy. She's disappointed, obviously and we care about her a great deal and want her bills to pass. But (Duff's) argument, there's a lot of people who agree."
Rojas said that there has currently been "limited" science on the effect of cellphones in classrooms. "If it's good for a population of children, why wouldn't be good for a population of children here," he said.
"It's a legitimate policy discussion," Ritter added.
House Minority Leader Vincent Candelora, R-North Branford, who voted for the bill last week, said Tuesday night that he was disappointed that the bill will not become law. "I think it never ceases to amaze me that a bill that has bipartisan support in the House ends up not being taken up in the Senate."
In the end, the attempt to get cellphones banned in the short session proved to be a repeat of Connecticut's 2025 legislation, when a bill aiming to restrict cellphones in schools statewide also did not pass despite significant support and the governor's backing.
"I think when we see the pieces of progressive legislation that come out of the Senate, I would think it's something that they would want to tackle," said Candelora in an interview on the House floor. He pointed to the Senate priority bill on artificial intelligence that addresses the exposure of children to social media content recently passed both the House and Senate and awaits final action from Gov. Ned Lamont.
"There was clearly a policy recognition that unfettered use of cellphones can do harm to children, and somehow they don't want to restrict it in schools," he said. "I don't understand it." He acknowledged that while most local school boards seem to have addressed the issue, "I do think we need a floor set in the state of Connecticut, and that's what I thought that bill did. If there's something that we need to fix it moving forward, I wish we had that conversation sooner. For technology one month is a lifetime, so we have yet again missed an opportunity to make sure that we've properly regulated student cellphone use in the classroom."
Currently, Connecticut school districts refer to guidance from the state Board of Education on cellphone use in schools. That guidance, which was adopted in August 2024, urges districts to develop a policy that restricts access to cellphones during the school day.
However, it is not required, so it is still up to districts about how they want to handle cellphones. That will remain so unless the legislature decides to take action on a ban in a future year.
"We did not get the ban that we wanted, and we think is truly beneficial to kids," said Kate Dias, president of the Connecticut Education Association, the state's largest teacher's union that has been lobbying for a cellphone ban. She guessed it's death was in part due to time constraints, as well as a lack of champions of the issue in the senate.
"But we are not done ... the issue isn't going to die or go away. We're going to keep pursuing it," Dias said.
She said the union planned to regroup and work on the local and state level to hopefully get device restrictions passed next year.
"I feel like its really good policy that benefits our kids," Leeper said Wednesday. "I think it's essential for our kids. Our kids are languishing, and it is irresponsible for us to ignore that."
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