Sponsors (2)
The bill increases transparency and national-security oversight of foreign-sponsored litigation by mandating disclosures and banning certain state-backed contingent funding, but it does so at the cost of higher compliance and administrative burdens, privacy risks, potential chilling of legitimate litigation finance (reducing access to justice), and disruptive retroactive effects on pending cases.
Courts, the DOJ, Congress, and litigants will have regular, comprehensive visibility into foreign-sourced litigation funding, improving judicial assessment, congressional and agency oversight, and public transparency about potential foreign influence.
Identifying funders and prohibiting contingent funding from foreign states or sovereign wealth funds reduces a direct channel for state actors to influence or profit from U.S. litigation, strengthening national-security protections.
Requiring disclosures as discoverable Rule 26(a) information and explicitly covering pending and future cases creates enforceable discovery obligations and legal certainty about applicability, reducing transitional disputes over which rules apply.
Low-income plaintiffs and other claimants who rely on third-party litigation financing may be deterred from obtaining funding (or funders may withdraw), reducing access to justice and preventing some meritorious claims from being pursued.
Producing sensitive funding agreements and reporting funder identities/addresses to courts or the DOJ risks exposing proprietary, privileged, or private information, creating confidentiality and commercial-privacy concerns for funders and parties.
Parties, counsel, and courts will face added compliance and discovery burdens to identify, collect, and produce funding contracts, and the DOJ will incur administrative costs to prepare required reports, increasing legal costs and consuming agency and court resources.
Based on analysis of 4 sections of legislative text.
Requires disclosure of foreign third‑party litigation funders, bans funding from foreign states/sovereign wealth funds, and mandates DOJ annual reports; applies to pending and future federal civil cases.
Official title: Amend chapter 111 of title 28, United States Code, to increase transparency and oversight of third-party funding by foreign persons, to prohibit third-party funding by foreign states and sovereign wealth funds, and for other purposes.
Introduced November 18, 2025 by John Neely Kennedy · Last progress November 18, 2025
Requires parties and counsel in federal civil cases to disclose foreign persons, foreign states, or sovereign wealth funds that have a contingent or outcome‑tied financial interest in the litigation and to produce any funding agreements; certifies source of funds and requires updates under penalty of perjury. Prohibits litigation funding agreements that are financed in whole or in part by a foreign state or sovereign wealth fund (those agreements are void) and requires the Attorney General to send annual reports to Judiciary Committees identifying foreign third‑party litigation funding activity in federal courts. The law applies to cases pending at enactment and to cases filed afterward.