Federal RuleAug 21
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DOL Rewrites Disability Rules for 'Merit-Based Opportunity' Push
RuleLabor DepartmentFederal Contract Compliance Programs OfficeSignificant Wallet
S1829119th CongressWALLET
STOP CSAM Act of 2025
Sponsored By: Senator Hawley, Josh [R-MO]
In Committee
Summary
Strengthened protections and enforcement against online child sexual exploitation. The bill tightens court privacy for child victims, forces online services to search for and report suspected abuse, and creates new civil and criminal rules for platforms.
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- Expands who counts as a covered person and presumes personal, medical, educational, and juvenile records are protected. It requires recorded depositions, guardian ad litem input, and sets a restitution rule for production cases at $3,000 or 10% of losses when smaller.
- Requires providers to report possible offenses to the CyberTipline as soon as reasonably possible and no later than 60 days after knowledge and to conduct affirmative searching and preservation. Large platforms with high user volumes must publish annual safety reports and face civil and criminal penalties for failures.
- Creates a trustee mechanism to hold and disburse restitution for vulnerable victims. It adds a private right of action against platforms with liquidated damages of $300,000 and allows injunctive relief and punitive damages.
*Authorizes $25.0 million per year for court implementation and $15.0 million per year for trustee administration, increasing federal spending.*
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Bill Overview
Analyzed Economic Effects
3 provisions identified: 2 benefits, 0 costs, 1 mixed.
Mandatory restitution and trustee program
This bill would require courts to order restitution for child‑pornography production or trafficking. For each victim, restitution would be $3,000, or 10% of the victim's full losses if those losses are under $3,000. Courts could appoint trustees or fiduciaries to hold and disburse restitution for children, incapacitated victims, and some foreign or stateless victims when needed. The bill would authorize $15 million per year to run the trustee program, and courts could require defendants to pay trustee fees or set fee schedules.
New online reporting and liability rules
This bill would require online providers to report suspected child sexual exploitation to the NCMEC CyberTipline as soon as possible and no later than 60 days after actual knowledge. Reports would need names, emails, IP addresses, URLs, technical hashes, copies of public material, age estimates, prior report history, and other account data when reasonably available. Providers would have affirmative search and preservation duties and must format reports to CyberTipline standards; NCMEC would compare hashes and forward matching reports to law enforcement. The bill would create a limited liability shield for good‑faith reporting, preservation, and narrowly defined research, but it would remove the shield if a provider knowingly failed to comply or knowingly gave preserved material to outsiders. It would also make it unlawful for providers to intentionally host or knowingly promote child sexual exploitation, with fines up to $1,000,000 and up to $5,000,000 in aggravated cases. The reporting changes would take effect 120 days after enactment.
Stronger court privacy for child victims
This bill would define covered persons as people who were under 18 when an abuse or exploitation offense happened and would give courts a rebuttable presumption that their identifying, medical, and school records stay private. A party asking to make that information public would have to meet a strict four-part public-interest test. The bill would let adults accompany child witnesses and allow courts to record attendant presence in certain testimony. It would authorize $25 million per year to the federal courts to help put these protections in place, under supervision of the Administrative Office Director.
Sponsors & CoSponsors
Sponsor
Hawley, Josh [R-MO]
MO • R
Cosponsors
Sen. Durbin, Richard J. [D-IL]
IL • D
Sponsored 5/21/2025
Sen. Klobuchar, Amy [D-MN]
MN • D
Sponsored 5/21/2025
Sen. Grassley, Chuck [R-IA]
IA • R
Sponsored 5/21/2025
Sen. Kelly, Mark [D-AZ]
AZ • D
Sponsored 5/21/2025
Sen. Britt, Katie Boyd [R-AL]
AL • R
Sponsored 6/2/2025
Sen. Moody, Ashley [R-FL]
FL • R
Sponsored 6/10/2025
Sen. Hyde-Smith, Cindy [R-MS]
MS • R
Sponsored 6/10/2025
Sen. Blumenthal, Richard [D-CT]
CT • D
Sponsored 6/26/2025
Sen. Kennedy, John [R-LA]
LA • R
Sponsored 9/18/2025
Sen. Gallego, Ruben [D-AZ]
AZ • D
Sponsored 9/29/2025
Sen. Shaheen, Jeanne [D-NH]
NH • D
Sponsored 9/29/2025
Sen. Lankford, James [R-OK]
OK • R
Sponsored 3/2/2026
Sen. Cortez Masto, Catherine [D-NV]
NV • D
Sponsored 5/14/2026
Sen. Justice, James C. [R-WV]
WV • R
Sponsored 5/18/2026
Sen. Tillis, Thomas [R-NC]
NC • R
Sponsored 6/1/2026
Sen. Fetterman, John [D-PA]
PA • D
Sponsored 6/1/2026
Sen. Blackburn, Marsha [R-TN]
TN • R
Sponsored 6/1/2026
Sen. Risch, James E. [R-ID]
ID • R
Sponsored 6/15/2026
Sen. Cotton, Tom [R-AR]
AR • R
Sponsored 6/15/2026
Sen. Collins, Susan M. [R-ME]
ME • R
Sponsored 6/15/2026
Sen. Coons, Christopher A. [D-DE]
DE • D
Sponsored 6/17/2026
Sen. Luján, Ben Ray [D-NM]
NM • D
Sponsored 6/24/2026
Sen. King, Angus S., Jr. [I-ME]
ME • I
Sponsored 7/13/2026
Sen. Schiff, Adam B. [D-CA]
CA • D
Sponsored 7/13/2026
Sen. Armstrong, Alan [R-OK]
OK • R
Sponsored 7/13/2026
Sen. Marshall, Roger [R-KS]
KS • R
Sponsored 7/13/2026
Sen. Capito, Shelley Moore [R-WV]
WV • R
Sponsored 7/28/2026
Sen. Reed, Jack [D-RI]
RI • D
Sponsored 7/28/2026
Sen. Duckworth, Tammy [D-IL]
IL • D
Sponsored 9/15/2026
Roll Call Votes
No roll call votes available for this bill.
View on Congress.gov