Sponsors (5)
The bill strengthens privacy and legal oversight for genetic data in bankruptcy estates—giving individuals notice and requiring secure deletion—but does so at the cost of slower, costlier estate sales, added compliance burdens, potential reductions in research access to datasets, and increased litigation risk.
Individuals whose genetic data appears in a bankruptcy estate gain a right to actual prior written notice before their genetic information is sold, leased, or used.
Trustees and debtors must delete genetic information not sold under §363 using court-prescribed methods (e.g., NIST SP 800-88), reducing risk of unauthorized retention and disclosure of sensitive genetic data.
Courts must find that sales or leases of genetic data will not violate nonbankruptcy law, increasing legal oversight and helping prevent unlawful disclosures of sensitive information.
Requiring actual prior written notice to each affected person could delay §363 sales and reduce bidder interest, lowering proceeds available to creditors and potentially increasing costs to taxpayers.
Trustees and estate administrators face new compliance costs and operational burdens to identify affected individuals and securely delete data to court standards.
Privacy requirements and notice obligations could make sales of large or deidentified genetic datasets infeasible, reducing research access and secondary-market uses of genetic data.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Adds new privacy protections for genetic information in bankruptcy cases by amending the Bankruptcy Code. The bill treats genetic information as a protected category, blocks use, sale, or lease of genetic data from an estate unless each affected person receives actual prior written notice, and requires trustees or debtors in possession to securely delete genetic information that was retained but not sold or transferred.
Introduced May 22, 2025 by John Cornyn · Last progress May 22, 2025