American Affordability Act of 2025

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.

HR5390 — FAMILY Act

This bill would create a federally administered paid family and medical leave insurance program that pays eligible workers for caregiving and serious medical needs while adding job and health coverage protections. It sets benefit formulas, eligibility rules, and a new Office of Paid Family and Medical Leave inside the Social Security Administration to run the program. - Families and caregivers: Would get paid leave based on earnings with benefits calculated using a three-tier formula and monthly minimum and maximum amounts. Caregiving is tracked in 1-hour units and capped per benefit period at 12 times an individual’s regular weekly hours, and the eligibility wage floor is $2,000 for benefit periods beginning in 2026. - Workers and job protections: Would include restoration to the same or equivalent job, continuation of health coverage during leave, anti-retaliation rules with a 12-month rebuttable presumption for recent leave takers, and limited exclusions for new hires. - Administration and employers: Creates a Deputy Commissioner‑led office at the SSA to set rules, run payments, publish annual demographic usage reports, share data with federal agencies, manage legacy State programs to avoid double counting, and require a GAO study after 2026 and every five years thereafter.

HR15 — Equality Act

Adds sexual orientation and gender identity to the federal definition of sex and creates a uniform, nationwide nondiscrimination framework across employment, housing, credit, education, public accommodations, jury service, and programs that receive federal funds. The bill would harmonize definitions, remedies, and rules of construction across multiple civil rights statutes to make enforcement and claims more consistent. - Workers: Private and federal employees would gain explicit protection from discrimination for sexual orientation and gender identity. The bill would update Title VII rules, expand remedies, and adjust bona fide occupational qualification rules to account for gender identity. - People using public places, students, and tenants: Public accommodations and education laws would explicitly bar discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. The Fair Housing Act would adopt the same definitions and protections to cover renters and buyers. - Borrowers, juries, and enforcement: The Equal Credit Opportunity Act would bar credit discrimination on these bases. Jury selection rules would be updated to prevent discrimination. The bill would also prevent the Religious Freedom Restoration Act from being used to challenge enforcement under the covered civil rights laws.

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.

HR18 — Bipartisan Background Checks Act of 2025

Expands background checks to most private firearm transfers. This bill would require unlicensed sellers to have a licensed importer, manufacturer, or dealer take possession of a firearm and run the federal background check before transferring it, while listing targeted exceptions. - Families: Certain loans and bona fide gifts between specified family members would be exempt if the transferor has no reason to believe the recipient is prohibited from possessing firearms. - Private sellers and dealers: Unlicensed sellers would need a licensee to take possession and process the transaction as dealer inventory so the existing background-check system applies. - Licensed-dealer paperwork: Licensees would have to give buyers a written notice and get a signed certification on a form the Attorney General prescribes. - Law enforcement and short-term use: The bill carves out exceptions for law enforcement, armed private security, military on duty, estate transfers, emergency transfers to prevent imminent harm, and temporary transfers at ranges or for hunting when the seller is present. - Administration and state authority: It would require the Attorney General to provide forms in English and Spanish and affirms it does not authorize a national firearms registry and preserves state lawmaking on the same subject.