Background checks expand to contractors and volunteers with children.
S. 1528 — CHILD Act of 2025 · Filed by Richard Durbin (D-IL) · 3 cosponsors · Introduced Apr 30, 2025 · Passed chamber
Your members of Congress
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What it does
This bill changes the National Child Protection Act of 1993. It lets businesses and groups request background checks on contractors and volunteers. It also covers people they license or certify. Before, these workers could skip background checks.
Who it affects
Parents and guardians of children benefit from wider background checks. Schools, childcare providers, and youth groups must check more workers. Contractors and volunteers may need to pass background checks.
One thing to notice
The bill does not say who pays for background checks. Schools and childcare providers may spend more money.
From the analysis of the bill text, linked under Primary records below.
Where it stands
3 cosponsors: 2 Democrats, 1 Republicans.
- Apr 30, 2025 — Introduced · Congress.gov: “Introduced in Senate”
- Apr 30, 2025 — Referred to Senate Committee on the Judiciary · Congress.gov: “Read twice and referred to the Committee on the Judiciary. (text: CR S2716)”
- Jul 24, 2025 — Reported out of committee · Congress.gov: “Committee on the Judiciary. Ordered to be reported without amendment favorably”
- Apr 21, 2026 — Passed the Senate · Congress.gov: “Passed Senate without amendment by Unanimous Consent. (consideration: CR S1854; text: CR S1854)”
Dates and quoted wording are Congress.gov's action record; the timeline shows status changes, not every procedural step.
Money around this bill
1 groups reported lobbying about this bill. They filed 2 reports from Dec 2025 to Jun 2026.
Those reports show $100,000 in lobbying spending. Each report lists about 2 bills. So that money was not all for this bill.
More groups named this bill than 0% of bills with any report.
Richard Durbin, who sponsored the bill, received $-29,800 from PACs for the 2026 election.
- Hopskipdrive, Inc. — $100,000 in 2 reports
Lobbying is legal. These reports show who lobbied about this bill, not what changed.
Words to know
- background checks — A search of a person's criminal history and past records.
- contractors — People hired to do a job for a set price, not full-time employees.
- volunteers — People who work without pay to help an organization or group.
- lobbying — Trying to influence lawmakers about a bill. Companies and groups pay people to do this.
- PACs — Groups that collect money and give it to candidates for office.
- sponsored — To sponsor a bill is to introduce it in Congress and put your name on it.
How this was measured
Analysis — Quorum's AI read the bill text published by Congress.gov (993 characters) on Jul 9, 2026. Section numbers in the findings refer to that text, linked below; transparency and hidden-provision scores are compared against the median of 14,522 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 2026-09-21.
“Background checks expand to contractors and volunteers with children.” QuorumCivic. https://share.quorumcivic.app/bill/119/s1528/simple Report an error