Prisons get cell-jamming power; FCC loses oversight of interference.
S. 1137 — Cellphone Jamming Reform Act of 2025 · Filed by Tom Cotton (R-AR) · 13 cosponsors · Introduced Mar 26, 2025 · Referred to committee
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What it does
This bill prevents the FCC from blocking state and federal prisons from installing cell-phone jamming equipment inside their facilities to block contraband phones. Prisons gain the power to jam signals; the FCC loses authority to regulate or prevent the practice. States must fund their own systems and notify the Bureau of Prisons.
Why we flagged it
The bill removes federal regulatory oversight of a specific technology (cell jamming) in a specific setting (correctional facilities), shifting authority from the FCC to state and federal prison operators. This is a targeted deregulation of wireless interference rules.
What the text implies
- Jamming equipment can interfere with 911 calls, emergency responder communications, and medical devices (pacemakers, insulin pumps) in nearby areas outside prison walls; the bill does not require interference studies or mitigation.
- The bill removes FCC's ability to set power levels, frequencies, or antenna placement standards, leaving those decisions entirely to individual prison operators with no uniform safety baseline.
- State prisons are required to fund systems themselves; federal prisons are not explicitly required to fund their own, creating potential cost-shifting to federal budget.
- Notification to Bureau of Prisons is required but no approval authority is granted; prisons can proceed without federal sign-off, limiting oversight of interference risk.
Section numbers refer to the bill text the analysis read — linked under Primary records below.
Who it affects
Prisons gain a tool to reduce contraband phones and associated violence/smuggling, a legitimate security interest. However, jamming equipment can interfere with emergency communications, medical devices, and signals to nearby communities outside prison walls, creating public safety risks that the bill does not address or require mitigation.
Who stands to gain
- cell-jamming equipment manufacturers
- correctional facility contractors and installers
Named in the bill
Federal Communications Commission (FCC), State correctional facilities, Federal correctional facilities, Bureau of Prisons, Local law enforcement agencies
Where it stands
13 cosponsors: 13 Republicans.
- Mar 26, 2025 — Introduced · Congress.gov: “Introduced in Senate”
- Mar 26, 2025 — Referred to Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation · Congress.gov: “Read twice and referred to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation”
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 3 disclosure filings across 3 quarters, Dec 2025 to Jun 2026. Those filings disclosed $15,000 in lobbying spend. A filing names 4 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.
Tom Cotton, the sponsor, reported $1,288,206 in PAC receipts in the 2026 cycle.
- Correctional Leaders Association — $15,000 on 3 filings
Lobbying Disclosure Act filings through Jul 20, 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 (2,159 characters) on Sep 23, 2026. Section numbers in the findings refer to that text, linked below; transparency and hidden-provision scores are compared against the median of 14,707 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 20, 2026 · page rendered 2026-09-23.
“Prisons get cell-jamming power; FCC loses oversight of interference.” QuorumCivic. https://share.quorumcivic.app/bill/119/s1137 Report an error