Banks can serve legal pot businesses without federal punishment.
S. 4942 — SAFE Banking Act of 2026 · Filed by Jeff Merkley (D-OR) · 7 cosponsors · Introduced Jun 24, 2026 · Referred to committee
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What it does
This bill lets banks work with pot and hemp companies. These companies must be legal in their states. Mortgage lenders can count pot company income on home loan forms. Banks get rules from federal regulators on how to serve pot companies. Banks must still report money activity that looks wrong to the government.
Who it affects
People and small pot company owners in legal states get bank accounts and mortgages. Banks and mortgage lenders can now serve this industry. People in states where pot is still banned do not benefit.
One thing to notice
Pot stays against federal law even with this bill. Banks only get rules that stop the government from punishing them. Pot is still banned by the federal government.
From the analysis of the bill text, linked under Primary records below.
Where it stands
7 cosponsors: 4 Republicans, 3 Democrats.
- Jun 24, 2026 — Introduced · Congress.gov: “Introduced in Senate”
- Jun 24, 2026 — Referred to Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs · Congress.gov: “Read twice and referred to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs”
Dates and quoted wording are Congress.gov's action record; the timeline shows status changes, not every procedural step.
Money around this bill
7 groups reported lobbying about this bill. They filed 8 reports from Jun 2026 to Jun 2026.
Those reports show $15,379,900 in lobbying spending. Each report lists about 12 bills. So that money was not all for this bill.
More groups named this bill than 86% of bills with any report.
Jeff Merkley, who sponsored the bill, received $507,925 from PACs for the 2026 election.
- National Association of Realtors — $14,580,000 in 1 report
- Reinsurance Assn of America — $710,000 in 2 reports
- Columbia University — $50,000 in 1 report
- Knowledge Alliance — $20,000 in 1 report
- National Cannabis Industry Association — $10,000 in 1 report
Lobbying is legal. These reports show who lobbied about this bill, not what changed.
Words to know
- federal — Run by the national government, not by states.
- mortgage lenders — Companies that loan money to people who want to buy homes.
- regulators — Government workers who make and enforce rules for banks.
- money activity that looks wrong — Financial behavior that banks must tell the government about.
- 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.
How this was measured
Analysis — Quorum's AI read the full bill text on Jul 9, 2026; 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 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 23, 2026 · page rendered 2026-09-23.
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