Congress moves to end blanket jury exclusion for people with disabilities
H.R. 5096 — Disability and Age in Jury Service Nondiscrimination Act · Filed by Lateefah Simon (D-CA) · 16 cosponsors · Introduced Sep 2, 2025 · Referred to committee
Your members of Congress
Enter a ZIP to see where your representative and both senators stood on this bill.
Looked up on this device — your ZIP is never stored on our servers.
What it does
This bill amends federal jury-service law to prohibit courts from excluding people from jury duty based on disability or age. It requires courts to consider whether reasonable accommodations could enable a disabled person to serve, rather than automatically disqualifying them. The bill protects citizens with disabilities from blanket exclusion and ensures they have equal access to civic participation.
Why we flagged it
The bill's operative mechanism is a nondiscrimination mandate protecting a class (people with disabilities) from categorical exclusion in a civic duty. It is a straightforward civil-rights amendment to jury-service law.
What the text implies
- Courts will need to develop reasonable-accommodation protocols for jury service, potentially requiring ASL interpreters, accessible facilities, modified jury instructions, or flexible scheduling — creating administrative and budgetary obligations for the federal judiciary.
- The shift from categorical 'infirmity' disqualification to individualized 'reasonable accommodation' assessment may increase voir dire complexity and litigation over what constitutes reasonable accommodation in specific cases.
- Juries will become more representative of the full population, potentially affecting jury deliberation dynamics and verdict patterns in ways that are difficult to predict but may alter outcomes in civil and criminal cases.
Section numbers refer to the bill text the analysis read — linked under Primary records below.
Who it affects
Citizens with disabilities gain a legal right to equal jury participation and protection from categorical exclusion. Courts must now assess accommodations individually rather than applying blanket bars, expanding civic participation and ensuring juries reflect the full community.
Named in the bill
Federal courts, U.S. District Courts, 28 U.S.C. § 1862, 28 U.S.C. § 1865, Judiciary Committee
Where it stands
16 cosponsors: 16 Democrats.
- Sep 2, 2025 — Introduced · Congress.gov: “Introduced in House”
- Sep 2, 2025 — Referred to House Committee on the Judiciary · Congress.gov: “Referred to the House Committee on the Judiciary”
Dates and quoted wording are Congress.gov's action record; the timeline shows status changes, not every procedural step.
Money around this bill
1 lobbying clients named this bill on 2 disclosure filings across 2 quarters, Dec 2025 to Jun 2026. Those filings disclosed $199,349 in lobbying spend. A filing names 95 bills on average, so that figure is what each filing reported, not a share belonging to this bill.
More lobbying clients named this bill than 0% of bills with at least one filing.
Lateefah Simon, the sponsor, reported $282,970 in PAC receipts in the 2026 cycle.
- Paralyzed Veterans of America — $199,349 on 2 filings
Lobbying Disclosure Act filings through Jul 17, 2026. A filing shows who paid to lobby on a bill it names, not what changed.
How this was measured
Analysis — Quorum's AI read the bill text published by Congress.gov (799 characters) on Aug 15, 2026. Section numbers in the findings refer to that text, linked below; transparency and hidden-provision scores are compared against the median of 16,222 analysed bills.
Status and sponsors — Congress.gov's bill record — actions, committee referrals and cosponsors — loaded nightly. The timeline shows status changes, not every procedural action.
Money — Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act filings whose specific-issue field names this bill for quarters ending Dec 2025 to Jun 2026. A filing's amount is reported whole beside the median number of bills a filing names; it is never divided across them. PAC receipts are FEC-reported contributions to the sponsor's candidate committee in the 2026 cycle.
As of — lobbying records through Jul 17, 2026 · page rendered 2026-10-20.
“Congress moves to end blanket jury exclusion for people with disabilities” QuorumCivic. https://share.quorumcivic.app/bill/119/hr5096 Report an error
The week in bills
One email, Sunday: what Congress passed, what it changed, and who paid.
One link arrives to confirm the address. It is used for this email and nothing else, and every issue carries an unsubscribe link.