Sponsors (3)
The bill creates clearer definitions, faster timelines, and greater transparency for plant importers—reducing uncertainty and spoilage risk—but shifts costs onto importers and risks expanded regulatory reach and procedural burdens that could lead to shipment losses or agency strain.
Importers (especially small businesses) will get faster, more predictable processing: plants must be released or detained quickly (5 days), may be transferred to private storage within 10 days, and final admissibility decisions and protests have firm 30-day deadlines.
Importers (including small businesses) will face less legal uncertainty because the bill clarifies which plant imports fall under the Lacey Act by providing clearer statutory definitions.
Importers will receive test results and replicable test information, allowing them to contest findings or obtain independent testing, improving fairness and due process in enforcement actions.
Importers (particularly small businesses) will face increased short-term out-of-pocket costs — demurrage, storage fees, and bonds — to move or retain detained plants.
If the Secretary misses the 30-day deadline, importers risk having shipments treated as excluded, which could force costly re-export or loss of the shipment.
Tying statutory definitions to existing Lacey Act language could expand regulatory reach without separate substantive notice, exposing nonprofits and businesses to new enforcement risk they may not expect.
Based on analysis of 3 sections of legislative text.
Requires the Interior Secretary (via USFWS) to make time‑bound release/detention decisions on plants presented by CBP, disclose test data, allow limited storage transfer, and issue implementing rules within 180 days.
Introduced September 15, 2025 by John Peter Ricketts · Last progress September 15, 2025
Requires the Interior Secretary (through the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service) to make fast, time‑bounded decisions about plants presented by Customs and Border Protection on suspicion of Lacey Act violations, and to give detained importers clear procedural protections. The bill sets deadlines for release or detention notices, allows limited removal of detained goods to storage, requires disclosure of test results and replicable test information to importers, provides a 30‑day protest decision process and preserves judicial review, and directs the agency to issue implementing regulations within 180 days of enactment.