Equality Act

S2150 — Women’s Health Protection Act of 2025

Guarantee nationwide protections for a person's right to obtain abortion services and a provider's right to deliver them. The Women's Health Protection Act of 2025 would create a federal rule that stops laws and rules that single out abortion or place heavier burdens on abortion than on similar medical procedures. It defines key terms, protects pre-viability care, allows post-viability care to protect life or health, and explicitly protects interstate travel and the movement of medicines, equipment, patients, and providers. - Families and patients: Would protect access to abortion before viability and allow post-viability care when needed to protect life or health. It would bar medically unnecessary in-person visit rules and stop forced disclosure of why a patient seeks care. - Health care providers: Would protect providers' ability to give abortion care including by telemedicine and across state lines, and would forbid facility, staffing, testing, or disclosure requirements that are not required for similar procedures. - States and interstate commerce: Would preempt conflicting state laws and recognize a right to travel and to assist others in getting reproductive health services across state lines. - Courts and enforcement: Would let the Attorney General sue and would create a private right of action so patients and providers can seek injunctive relief and attorney's fees. It would limit state sovereign immunity where federal law allows challenges.

S2523 — John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act of 2025

This bill would restore and strengthen federal voting-rights protections by rewriting Section 2, creating a practice-based preclearance process for certain election changes, and boosting transparency and enforcement. - Voters in racial, language-minority, and Tribal communities would gain broader legal standards to challenge discrimination. The bill would add distinct Section 2 tests for vote-dilution, vote-denial, and intentional discrimination and add a retrogression standard that applies to actions taken on or after 2021. - State and local election officials would face new preclearance and public-notice rules. Covered changes like election methods, redistricting shifts, ID rules, polling-place moves, and voter-list removals would need review before implementation and require pre-election notices 30 days before Federal elections with 48-hour updates. - The Department of Justice and private citizens would get stronger tools to enforce rights. The Attorney General would centralize observers, extend bilingual protections to 2037, seek preventive relief, issue pre-action information demands, and pursue expanded court remedies.

S1115 — Paycheck Fairness Act

Stronger enforcement against sex-based wage discrimination. This bill would tighten legal remedies, expand pay-data reporting, and fund training and grants to help close persistent pay gaps between men and women. - Workers: Would expand protections so employees can discuss pay without retaliation and pursue compensatory and, for willful misconduct, punitive damages. It also narrows the employer "bona fide factor" defense so pay differences must be job-related and business-necessary. - Employers: Private firms with 100 or more employees would face new pay-data reporting requirements by sex, race, and ethnicity and public disclosure of aggregated results by industry, occupation, and metro area. - Federal contractors and agencies: The Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs would restart and expand contractor pay surveys and must annually select not less than half of nonconstruction contractor establishments to report. The Bureau of Labor Statistics would continue tracking women in its employment survey. - Training, grants, and outreach: The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and OFCCP must receive training funded by appropriations. A new competitive Negotiation Skills Training grant program would fund entities to teach pay negotiation and report on outcomes.

S3214 — Background Check Expansion Act

Would require background checks for most private firearm transfers by routing them through licensed dealers. This bill would create a new transfer framework that makes it unlawful for two unlicensed people to complete a firearm transfer without a licensed importer, manufacturer, or dealer first taking possession to run the check and comply with federal transfer rules. - Private sellers and buyers would have to route most sales through a licensed importer, manufacturer, or dealer who would take possession to run the background check and follow all transfer requirements. - Licensed importers, manufacturers, and dealers would be required to provide a notice of the prohibition and collect a certification on a form prescribed by the Attorney General before completing a transfer. - Close family and estate transfers would be exempt, including transfers between spouses, domestic partners, parents and children, siblings, aunts or uncles and nieces or nephews, and grandparents and grandchildren, and transfers by operation of law to executors or trustees. - Temporary and specific transfers would be exempt in narrowly defined situations. These include short-term transfers to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm, transfers approved under the tax code, and transfers that occur only at a shooting range or for hunting, trapping, or fishing while the transferor is present and has no reason to believe the transferee is prohibited. - Transfers to law enforcement officers, armed private security professionals acting within official duties, and members of the Armed Forces acting in their official capacity would be exempt. - The bill's amendments would take effect 180 days after enactment.

S2837 — Protect America’s Workforce Act

Protect federal employees' collective bargaining rights. This bill would nullify Executive Orders 14251 and 14343 that exclude certain workers from federal labor-management programs, bar any federal funds from carrying them out, and preserve collective bargaining agreements in effect on March 26, 2025 through their stated terms. - Federal employees and unions: Keeps contracts that existed on March 26, 2025 in force until their agreed expiration, protecting negotiated pay and working conditions. - Federal agencies: Prevents agencies from obligating or spending federal funds to implement the two Executive Orders, blocking efforts to remove those exclusions.

S2556 — Protecting Health Care and Lowering Costs Act

Permanently expands premium tax credits and removes the 400% cap. This bill would make enhanced premium subsidies permanent with a new sliding scale of required premium shares by income and would repeal Subtitle B of Title VII to restore the prior health-related framework. - Households: Families and individuals above 400% of the federal poverty line could qualify for premium tax credits and would face premium caps up to 8.5% of income. - Health law framework: Repeals Subtitle B of Title VII and directs that any law or regulation referenced there apply as if that subtitle had not been enacted, restoring the earlier health-related rules. - Timing: The changes would apply to taxable years beginning after December 31, 2025.