Sponsors (4)
Introduced March 27, 2025 by Suzanne Bonamici · Last progress March 27, 2025
The bill increases transparency, coverage, and enforcement tools to deter harassment and improve safety for NOAA personnel and at‑sea workers, but it raises meaningful privacy, administrative, and free‑speech risks that could deter reporting and impose costs on agencies and private operators.
NOAA employees (including observers and at‑sea monitors) will have greater transparency and formal accountability because the bill requires publication of case synopses, disciplinary outcomes, and counts of harassment/assault/equal‑employment matters.
Victims and potential victims within NOAA and contractor communities gain safer reporting options because the bill preserves/creates confidential (restricted) reporting pathways and lets victims authorize limited PII sharing for safety or law‑enforcement needs.
Observers, catch monitors, Regional Fishery Management Council members, and other at‑sea personnel are explicitly covered by the statute, clarifying who is protected and subject to responsibilities.
NOAA employees and victims face significant privacy and reporting‑chill risks because public case synopses and expanded reporting requirements could allow inadvertent identification of complainants and discourage reporting.
NOAA, Coast Guard, and related offices will incur material administrative and implementation costs (staff time, redaction, reporting, policy updates), which could divert resources from operations and impose taxpayer expense.
Mandatory vessel reporting that requires names and contact information and permits broad disclosures (e.g., to prevent 'serious or imminent' threats) increases the risk that victims' PII will be shared beyond their control.
Based on analysis of 9 sections of legislative text.
Strengthens NOAA sexual harassment/assault rules: expands reporting and data transparency, adds restricted‑reporting protections, mandates vessel incident reports, defines covered personnel, and bars certain offenders from the NOAA Corps.
Strengthens NOAA policies and reporting on sexual harassment and sexual assault by expanding required data collection and public synopses, tightening reporting rules for incidents on vessels and among NOAA personnel, adding privacy and restricted‑reporting protections, and making certain criminal‑conviction rules applicable to the NOAA Commissioned Officer Corps. It also broadens a Magnuson‑Stevens Act prohibition to cover more locations and removes the word “forcibly” from that prohibition. The law creates new definitions for who counts as covered personnel (explicitly including fisheries observers and Regional Fishery Management Council members), requires annual expanded reports to Congress with case synopses and disciplinary actions, mandates vessel incident reporting to the Coast Guard, and requires updates to NOAA restricted‑reporting policy and limited disclosures of victim PII for specific purposes.