American Teacher Act

HR20 — Richard L. Trumka Protecting the Right to Organize Act of 2025

Strengthens worker organizing rights and enforcement. The bill broadens who counts as an employee or joint employer and builds tougher remedies, penalties, and election rules to make organizing and bargaining easier to enforce and monitor. - Workers: Expands who is treated as an employee by tightening the three-part test for independent contractors and broadening the joint-employer test to include direct, indirect, and reserved control. It adds clear protections for strike participation and allows back pay without reduction and liquidated damages equal to twice awarded damages. - Employers: Requires prompt disclosure and new notice duties including a detailed voter list within two business days and multilingual employee notices. Noncompliance can trigger civil penalties including up to $50,000 per unfair labor practice, up to $10,000 per refusal to obey Board orders, and fines for posting or voter-list violations. - Elections, agencies, and unions: NLRB must adopt remote electronic voting within one year and aim to hold elections within twenty business days. The bill also boosts NLRB reporting and transparency, expands private suits, and creates new whistleblower protections and expedited enforcement.

HR14 — John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act of 2025

This bill would restore robust federal oversight of voting rights by rewriting Section 2 and creating a broad practice-based preclearance system. It sets new tests for vote-dilution and vote-denial claims, adds retrogression rules for actions on or after January 1, 2021, and requires extensive public notice, data disclosure, and observer powers. - Minority and language-minority voters: Provides clearer legal paths to challenge districting and practices that dilute or abridge votes, recognizes coalitions of minority groups, and applies retrogression rules to actions from January 1, 2021. - States and local election officials: Triggers preclearance using a 25-year lookback with numeric thresholds and creates an administrative bailout that requires demonstrating sustained compliance over a 10-year period to avoid coverage. - Enforcement, oversight, and courts: Expands who may sue to include private "aggrieved persons", centralizes observer authority in the Attorney General, and authorizes pre-suit inspection and information demands that courts may enforce or modify.

HR17 — Paycheck Fairness Act

Strengthening pay equity by expanding who is protected and limiting employers from using past pay, the Paycheck Fairness Act would tighten how pay differences are justified and increase enforcement and data collection. - Workers and prospective employees would gain a ban on employer reliance on wage history and new nonretaliation protections for wage discussions. The bill lets a candidate voluntarily share prior pay only after a job offer and only to justify a higher wage. - Employers would face new civil penalties for wage-history violations starting at $5,000 for a first offense and rising by $1,000 per subsequent offense to a $10,000 cap. Affected workers could recover damages up to $10,000 plus attorneys’ fees and injunctive relief where appropriate. - Federal enforcement and oversight would increase. The EEOC and the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs would enforce the rules. The bill would create a National Equal Pay Enforcement Task Force and require expanded pay-data collection by EEOC, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and OFCCP from federal contractors. Provisions would take effect six months after enactment.

HR2550 — Protect America's Workforce Act

Preserves federal employees' collective bargaining agreements. This Act nullifies the Executive Order titled "Exclusions from Federal Labor-Management Relations Programs." - Federal employees and unions: Collective bargaining agreements that were in effect on March 26, 2025 remain valid and continue to apply through each contract's stated term. - Federal agencies and federal funds: Agencies may not obligate or spend federal funds to carry out that Executive Order, and the Executive Order has no force or effect.

HR1589 — American Dream and Promise Act of 2025

New pathways to permanent residence. This bill would create a ten‑year conditional permanent resident status for certain people who entered as children and would add an adjustment pathway for specified Temporary Protected Status and Deferred Enforced Departure holders. - Young long‑term residents and DACA‑eligible people could get a ten‑year conditional status if they meet rules like continuous presence since Jan 1, 2021 and education or credential benchmarks. They could convert to full permanent residence after meeting removal‑of‑condition rules and have limits on removal while applying. - Nationals with qualifying TPS or DED status who meet continuous‑presence rules could apply within a three‑year window and face a capped application fee of $1,140. - The bill creates a competitive grant program to help applicants, allows fee exemptions for youth, low‑income people, foster care alumni, and those with serious disabilities, and adds a $25 supplemental surcharge to fund appointed counsel.

HJRES80 — Establishing the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment.

Declares the Equal Rights Amendment part of the United States Constitution. This bill would assert that the ERA was ratified by the legislatures of three‑fourths of the states and that the time limit in House Joint Resolution 208 does not bar its validity. It creates no new programs, funding, or enforcement mechanisms and makes no administrative or jurisdictional changes beyond recognizing the amendment's constitutional status.