Federal Employees Civil Relief Act

S51 — Washington, D.C. Admission Act

This bill would admit the District of Columbia as the State of Washington, Douglass Commonwealth, giving its residents full congressional representation. It would also carve out a separate federal 'Capital' around core federal buildings and set a staged transition for courts, services, and federal property. - Residents: District residents would gain two Senators and one Representative immediately upon admission and the current non‑voting Delegate office would be repealed. - Territory and federal limits: A defined Capital area including the Capitol, White House, Supreme Court, and adjacent federal lands would remain under U.S. title or jurisdiction and generally would not be subject to state taxation except where Congress permits. - Courts, justice, and transition supports: The bill would keep federal prosecution support, U.S. Marshals services, pretrial and public defender arrangements, and Bureau of Prisons housing rules during transition; it would provide a temporary Federal Medical Assistance Percentage uplift for five years and establish an 18‑member Statehood Transition Commission to oversee the change.

S1503 — Equality Act

Treat sexual orientation and gender identity as forms of sex discrimination across federal law. The bill would explicitly add sexual orientation and gender identity to federal sex‑discrimination protections and apply those rules across many statutes and programs.

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.

S2178 — Equal Dignity for Married Taxpayers Act of 2025

Establishes gender-neutral tax treatment for legally married same-sex couples. It would replace hundreds of gendered words in the Internal Revenue Code so tax filing, credits, deductions, elections, reporting, estate and gift rules operate the same for legally married same-sex couples as for other married taxpayers. - Families: Legally married same-sex couples would have identical access to joint returns, survivor returns, tax elections, credits, deductions, exclusions, and reporting rules as other married couples. - Estates and gifts: Spousal gift and estate provisions would be rewritten to recognize transfers between married individuals without gender bias. Rules that treat certain third-party gifts as made one-half by each spouse would be preserved. - Community property states: Community income would be clarified as owned or treated by the married couple as a unit rather than assigned by gender. - Tax administration: Cross-references, titles, and definitions across the Code would be updated so calculations and eligibility work consistently for married couples regardless of gender. - Judicial language: Separate editorial edits would replace pronouns in a judicial rules section to clarify references to judges or special trial judges without changing policy.