Sponsors (3)
The bill strengthens federal criminal tools, expanded penalties, and sentencing guidance to deter and punish online threats, coercion, and sextortion targeting children—improving protections and prosecutorial clarity—but does so in ways that expand federal reach and penalties, raising significant free‑speech, due‑process, juvenile‑justice, and fiscal risks.
Children and minors will gain new federal criminal protections because threats to distribute sexual images and online coercion (including coercion to self-harm, murder, injury, or arson) using mail, interstate, or online channels become prosecutable even when images do not exist, enabling preventive enforcement against exploitation.
Victims (including child survivors of sexual exploitation and sextortion) will face stronger sentencing outcomes because federal sentencing guidelines and statutory penalties are enhanced to account for modern technology-enabled harms, number of victims, and severe harms (including suicide), increasing deterrence and accountability.
Law enforcement and prosecutors will have clearer statutory tools to charge interstate/online threats, conspiracies, attempts, and coercion involved in sextortion and child abuse, simplifying prosecutions of online exploitation schemes.
Children, parents, schools, and the general public face a high risk of overbroad criminalization and chilled speech because ambiguous definitions of 'threat' and 'coerce' and expansions replacing terms like 'sexual' with 'online' could sweep in noncriminal or bluffing speech.
Children and juveniles may face increased federal criminal involvement because the bill brings certain juvenile conduct into federal statutes and references juvenile delinquency, potentially subjecting youth to harsher federal processing and outcomes.
Taxpayers and the justice system will bear substantially higher fiscal burdens because expanded penalties, longer sentences, and increased prosecutions will raise corrections, investigative, and prosecutorial costs.
Based on analysis of 5 sections of legislative text.
Creates new federal offenses for threats and coercion tied to child sexual exploitation, expands definitions, and raises penalties and sentencing guidelines for online coercion and sextortion.
Makes new federal crimes and increases penalties for online threats, coercion, and exploitation of minors, including threats to distribute alleged child sexual images and using threats or images to intimidate or extort. Directs the U.S. Sentencing Commission to revise sentencing guidelines to reflect modern online child exploitation behaviors and harm. Creates a new offense criminalizing coercing a minor to kill, attempt suicide, injure, harm animals, or commit arson via mail or interstate/foreign commerce; expands criminal liability for threats to distribute child sexual abuse material even when no visual depiction exists; and raises maximum penalties for specified offenses used to intimidate, coerce, or cause substantial emotional distress.
Official title: COP Act
Introduced December 15, 2025 by Laurel Lee · Last progress February 26, 2026