Sponsors (81)
Introduced December 10, 2025 by Robert C. Scott · Last progress December 10, 2025
The bill increases enforcement teeth and worker protections (including parity and anti‑retaliation measures) but does so by raising penalties and expanding liability in ways that significantly increase costs, legal exposure, and regulatory burdens for employers, plans, and potentially taxpayers.
Workers (including minors and union members) gain stronger protections and safer workplaces because higher civil penalties and a new retaliation penalty increase deterrence and make employers more accountable for labor, safety, and collective‑bargaining violations.
Plan participants and beneficiaries get stronger enforcement of genetic‑information and mental‑health/SUD parity rules because more entities (plan administrators, vendors, issuers) can be held liable and the Department of Labor has clearer authority to collect penalties.
Federal enforcement capacity and regulatory consistency are improved because the Secretary of Labor can directly collect imposed civil penalties and the Department is required to clarify enforcement authority and issue implementing rules within a set timeframe.
Employers — particularly small businesses — face substantially higher financial exposure because the bill raises maximum fines, creates new per‑violation penalties, and treats multi‑day recordkeeping lapses as continuing violations, which could strain finances, lead to layoffs, or drive closures.
Plan administrators, service providers, and issuers face greater legal and compliance costs from expanded liability, which may be passed on to participants as higher premiums, reduced benefits, or narrower access to services.
Corporate officers and directors risk personal liability for labor‑law violations, increasing individual legal exposure and potentially deterring hiring, investment, or entrepreneurship.
Based on analysis of 6 sections of legislative text.
Raises civil penalties across labor and safety laws, creates new retaliation fines, expands liable parties for health-plan breaches, adds NLRB civil fines and officer liability, and makes recordkeeping violations continuing.
Increases civil fines and expands enforcement across many federal labor laws to strengthen penalties for child-labor, wage-and-hour, OSHA, mine-safety, and unfair-labor-practice violations, and adds a new penalty for retaliation against workers. It also broadens who can be held liable for failures in group health plan rules, lets the National Labor Relations Board levy monetary penalties (including possible personal liability for officers/directors), and treats certain recordkeeping failures as continuing violations until fixed. Most major penalty and enforcement changes take effect January 1, 2027; the recordkeeping rule takes effect on enactment.