§2601a Direct Acceptance of Gifts by Members of the Armed Forces and Department of Defense and Coast Guard Employees and Their Families

Summary

The Secretary of Defense must create rules that let certain people accept gifts from nonprofit groups, private people, and other outside sources, with limits the rules set. The Secretary of Homeland Security must do the same for the Coast Guard when it is not part of the Navy. The people who may accept gifts are four groups: eligible service members, eligible Department of Defense or Coast Guard civilian employees, their family members, and survivors of a member or employee who was killed. The rules must apply the same way across the Department of Defense and, as much as possible, the Coast Guard, and a designated agency ethics official must review and approve a gift before it is accepted to make sure it follows the Joint Ethics Regulation. The rules apply to service members who, while on active duty, full-time National Guard duty, or inactive-duty training on or after September 11, 2001, had an injury or illness that fits one of these: the kind listed in 10 U.S.C. 1413a(e)(2); an injury in an operation or area the Secretary of Defense calls a combat operation or combat zone under the rules; enrollment in the Warriors in Transition program (see section 738(e) of Public Law 112–239, 10 U.S.C. 1071 note); or other similar situations the Secretary decides deserve the same treatment. The same rules cover civilian employees injured under those circumstances. The rules may not allow gifts from foreign governments or international organizations or their agents. To the extent the rules say so for the combat-operation case, they may cover gifts received after December 31, 2011 for injuries or illnesses that happened on or after September 11, 2001.