Sponsor
Charles Ellis Schumer
Senator · D-NY
Senator · D-NY
This bill substantially expands survivors’ civil remedies—removing time bars, widening venues, and allowing suits against facilitators—to increase accountability and compensation, but it also will meaningfully increase federal litigation, costs, and fairness concerns for defendants and third parties.
Survivors of sexual abuse, forced labor, sex trafficking, and peonage (including women, children, immigrants, and low‑income survivors) can sue perpetrators and third parties who financially benefited—recovering damages and attorneys’ fees—creating new civil remedies and more routes to compensation.
Survivors of offenses under key trafficking and forced‑labor statutes (e.g., §§1589, 1590, 1591 and certain sexual‑abuse statutes) face no statute of limitations for civil claims, letting long‑delayed disclosures or childhood abuse lead to lawsuits regardless of how long ago the harm occurred.
Victims can bring civil suits in a wider set of federal venues (including districts tied to related criminal prosecutions), increasing access to federal courts and enabling coordination with criminal cases across districts.
Federal courts will likely see a substantial increase in civil filings (including a one‑year surge of revived claims), creating added caseloads, longer litigation timelines, and higher costs borne by taxpayers and the judiciary.
Reviving long‑stale claims and eliminating or extending statutes of limitations raises fairness and due‑process concerns for defendants because evidence, witnesses, and records may be degraded or lost over time.
Broad liability standards (e.g., suits against those who "know or should have known" they benefited) and revived claims can expose businesses, individuals, and insurers to costly litigation and higher insurance or defense expenses even where culpability is uncertain.
Based on analysis of 4 sections of legislative text.
Creates federal civil causes of action for sexual abuse and transportation-for-illegal-sexual-activity, removes time limits for certain trafficking claims, expands venue, and opens a one‑year look‑back window.
Official title: Amend title 18, United States Code, to create a civil cause of action for certain crimes and to eliminate the statute of limitations for civil actions relating to certain crimes, and for other purposes.
Introduced February 10, 2026 by Charles Ellis Schumer · Last progress February 10, 2026
Creates new federal civil causes of action for victims of sexual abuse and for victims of transportation-for-illegal-sexual-activity, lets victims sue perpetrators and people who knowingly financially benefit from those crimes, and provides damages and attorney’s fees. It also broadens venue for certain trafficking-related civil suits, removes time limits for civil claims tied to specific sex‑trafficking/forced‑labor statutes, and opens a one‑year retroactive window allowing some time‑barred cases to be refiled.