Sponsors (2)
The bill expands local access to digital fabrication to boost STEM education, workforce training, and local entrepreneurship—especially in underserved districts—while trading off public costs, safety and IP/regulatory risks, potential access fees, local-competition effects, and governance/administration challenges.
Students and educators nationwide gain expanded hands-on STEM and digital fabrication skills through local fab labs and makerspaces, improving technical education and learning opportunities.
Underserved, rural, Tribal, and other communities get prioritized local access (at least one lab per congressional district) to fabrication tools, increasing educational, economic, and community opportunity.
Workers and jobseekers can access workforce-development and training tied to advanced and emerging manufacturing, improving employability and pathways into technical jobs.
Local communities face safety, misuse, intellectual-property, and hazardous-material risks from expanded distributed fabrication that will require resources and oversight to manage.
Taxpayers may bear costs to establish, support, or sustain a national public–private fab lab network if federal or public funds are used without clear appropriation limits.
Membership dues, fees, or local cost-recovery measures could create access barriers for students, small groups, and some small businesses, undermining equity goals.
Based on analysis of 3 sections of legislative text.
Establishes a nonprofit to create, expand, standardize, and connect local fab labs nationwide and to seek at least one fab lab per congressional district.
Official title: Establish the National Fab Lab Network, a nonprofit organization consisting of a national network of local digital fabrication facilities providing universal access to advanced manufacturing tools for workforce development, STEM education, developing inventions, creating businesses, producing personalized products, mitigating risks, and for other purposes.
Introduced June 24, 2026 by Christopher Van Hollen · Last progress June 24, 2026
Creates a nonprofit corporation called the National Fab Lab Network to expand, connect, and support local digital fabrication facilities (fab labs, makerspaces, hackerspaces) across the United States. The corporation will maintain a national registry, issue standards and operational guidance, assist new and existing labs, train leaders and mentors, and aim to place at least one fab lab in each congressional district with priority for underserved communities. Defines minimum technical capabilities and mission for a “fab lab,” sets corporate governance rules and board composition, and authorizes the corporation to act as a public–private coordinating body to broaden access to hands-on STEM education, workforce skills, entrepreneurship, and distributed manufacturing capabilities. The corporation is a private nonprofit (not a federal agency) and is subject to applicable District of Columbia nonprofit law except where the Act provides specific rules.