Sponsors (2)
This bill increases procedural protections, nondiscrimination safeguards, remedies, and public transparency for security-clearance decisions — improving fairness and accountability for federal workers — while raising real risks to operational secrecy, response speed, agency resources, and administrative/legal costs.
Federal employees and military personnel will get clearer, enforceable procedural protections when security-clearance eligibility is denied or revoked — including formal appeals with hearings, written explanations, and panel reviews — reducing risk of arbitrary decisions.
Federal employees and service members who are improperly denied or revoked can receive corrective remedies — including return-to-position relief and up to $300,000 in compensation — providing financial relief and a path to job restoration.
Taxpayers and the public will have greater transparency and accountability because agencies must publish their procedures for access to classified information and post (redacted) final appeal decisions online within set timelines.
Taxpayers and national-security personnel face a risk that publishing procedures and decisions (even redacted) could disclose sensitive methods, selection criteria, or program details that adversaries could exploit.
National-security operations could be hampered when expanded procedural protections and mandatory appeal steps delay urgent denials or revocations of access in time-sensitive cases.
Agencies may experience resource strain meeting strict publication and review deadlines (e.g., 180- and 30-day windows and average review timelines), potentially slowing other security or mission activities.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Changes how decisions are made about who can access classified information by making the statutory procedures in current law the exclusive rules for access determinations, requiring the President to publish those procedures in the Federal Register within 180 days, and adding new legal protections and procedural requirements for eligibility decisions. It adds a new statutory section that defines key terms and limits agency heads from making eligibility determinations that violate specified constitutional rights, discriminate on listed bases, or retaliate for protected political activity or beliefs.
Makes statutory procedures the exclusive rules for classified-access decisions, requires publication of those procedures and revisions, and adds nondiscrimination and constitutional protections for eligibility determinations.
Introduced June 5, 2025 by Mark R. Warner · Last progress June 5, 2025