New federal felony for road-blocking protest: 5 years in prison
S. 2115 — Safe and Open Streets Act · Filed by Thom Tillis (R-NC) · 4 cosponsors · Introduced Jun 18, 2025 · Referred to committee
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What it does
This bill amends federal law to create a new federal crime: blocking public roads or highways in a way that interferes with commerce. The offense carries a penalty of up to 5 years in prison and/or fines. The bill broadens the existing federal extortion statute (18 U.S.C. § 1951) to include road-blocking as a standalone crime, separate from the current requirement that interference involve threats or violence.
Why we flagged it
The bill's operative mechanism is to expand federal criminal law to reach road-blocking conduct, creating a new felony with a 5-year prison sentence. While framed as protecting commerce, the functional effect is to federalize and criminalize protest tactics, shifting enforcement authority and raising penalties.
What the text implies
- The bill does not define 'affect commerce' or 'blocking' with precision, creating prosecutorial discretion to charge protest activity broadly — a sit-in, march, or permitted demonstration that slows traffic could trigger federal charges.
- Conforming amendments strike 'by threats or violence' from the section heading and related cross-references, signaling that road-blocking alone (without threats/violence) now constitutes the federal crime — a significant expansion of federal criminal reach.
- The 5-year felony penalty is substantially higher than many state misdemeanor charges for similar conduct, creating incentive for federal prosecution and potential disparate enforcement against certain protest movements.
- No carve-out for permitted demonstrations, lawful assembly, or First Amendment-protected activity — the statute as written applies to any road-blocking that 'in any way or degree' affects commerce.
Section numbers refer to the bill text the analysis read — linked under Primary records below.
Who it affects
The bill creates a new federal felony for road-blocking protest, lowering the threshold for federal prosecution and imposing a 5-year prison penalty for conduct that may constitute protected political speech or civil disobedience. Citizens exercising First Amendment rights through protest tactics face federal criminal liability and incarceration, chilling protest activity and shifting enforcement from state/local to federal level without clear public-safety justification.
Named in the bill
18 U.S.C. § 1951, 18 U.S.C. § 1961, 18 U.S.C. § 2516, 5 U.S.C. § 8332, Chapter 95 of Title 18
Where it stands
4 cosponsors: 4 Republicans.
- Jun 18, 2025 — Introduced · Congress.gov: “Introduced in Senate”
- Jun 18, 2025 — Referred to Senate Committee on the Judiciary · Congress.gov: “Read twice and referred to the 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 $1,005,758 in lobbying spend. A filing names 133 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.
Thom Tillis, the sponsor, reported $973,475 in PAC receipts in the 2026 cycle.
- National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies — $1,005,758 on 2 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 (1,512 characters) on Jun 8, 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 20, 2026 · page rendered 2026-10-20.
“New federal felony for road-blocking protest: 5 years in prison” QuorumCivic. https://share.quorumcivic.app/bill/119/s2115 Report an error
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