Federal law now requires employers to give survivors 40 days of leave—and bars forced arbitration.
S. 4635 — SAFE for Survivors Act of 2026 · Filed by Patty Murray (D-WA) · 10 cosponsors · Introduced May 21, 2026 · 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 creates federal protections for survivors of domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, stalking, and related gender-based violence. It requires employers to provide at least 40 days of leave per year (10 paid, 30 unpaid) for survivors to seek safety, legal help, counseling, or medical care; prohibits retaliation against employees who take such leave; requires reasonable workplace accommodations (schedule changes, security measures, transfers); bars predispute arbitration agreements that would prevent survivors from suing; and establishes civil remedies including damages, attorney fees, and penalties for violations.
Why we flagged it
The bill's operative mechanism is creating affirmative employment rights (paid leave, accommodations, anti-retaliation) and enforcement remedies for survivors of gender-based violence. It is fundamentally a worker-protection and public-safety measure, not a deregulation or subsidy.
What the text implies
- Arbitration waiver (Section 5) may expose employers to class-action litigation risk, potentially increasing litigation costs and settlement exposure for businesses with multiple survivors.
- Certification requirements (Section 201(e)(2)) allow survivors to use sworn statements or professional attestations without requiring police reports, lowering evidentiary barriers but potentially creating disputes over sufficiency of proof.
- Emergency benefits provision (Section 205) ties leave eligibility to state TANF funding, creating potential disparities in survivor support across states with different welfare programs.
- Reasonable accommodation standard (Section 302) uses 'undue hardship' test borrowed from ADA, but application to violence-related accommodations (e.g., security measures, schedule changes) may generate litigation over what constitutes undue burden.
- Text truncation prevents full analysis of Title III (Survivors' Employment Sustainability) provisions on discrimination and accommodation enforcement, limiting confidence in complete civic assessment.
Section numbers refer to the bill text the analysis read — linked under Primary records below.
Who it affects
Survivors of violence gain concrete workplace protections—paid leave, job security, reasonable accommodations, and the right to sue for violations—reducing economic hardship and enabling them to escape abuse. The bill addresses a documented $137.8 billion annual cost to the economy from lost productivity and creates enforceable remedies against employer retaliation.
Who stands to gain
- Victim services organizations (expanded grant funding and resource provision)
- Legal services providers (increased demand for legal assistance from survivors)
- Employers with existing paid-leave infrastructure (lower incremental cost to comply)
Named in the bill
Department of Justice Office on Violence Against Women, Secretary of Labor, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Merit Systems Protection Board, Office of Congressional Workplace Rights, Office of Personnel Management, Librarian of Congress, Comptroller General, Violence Against Women Act of 1994, Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993, Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, Civil Rights Act of 1964 — and 4 more
Where it stands
10 cosponsors: 9 Democrats, 1 Independents.
- May 21, 2026 — Introduced · Congress.gov: “Introduced in Senate”
- May 21, 2026 — Referred to Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions · Congress.gov: “Read twice and referred to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions”
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 1 disclosure filings across 1 quarter, Jun 2026 to Jun 2026. Those filings disclosed $10,000 in lobbying spend. A filing names 5 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.
Patty Murray, the sponsor, reported $324,700 in PAC receipts in the 2026 cycle.
- The Dual Eligible Coalition — $10,000 on 1 filing
Lobbying Disclosure Act filings through Jul 15, 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 (50,094 characters) on Nov 2, 2026. Section numbers in the findings refer to that text, linked below; transparency and hidden-provision scores are compared against the median of 16,927 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 Jun 2026 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 15, 2026 · page rendered 2026-11-02.
“Federal law now requires employers to give survivors 40 days of leave—and bars forced arbitration.” QuorumCivic. https://share.quorumcivic.app/bill/119/s4635 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.