House Passes It — Johnson Pulls Off a Stunning Win
The House has passed a federal version of Kayleigh's Law, advancing legislation that would require lifetime no-contact orders for victims of certain federal violent and sexual offenses when the victim, or the government with the victim's consent, asks for that protection at sentencing.
H.R. 8481, the Kayleigh's Law Act of 2026, cleared the House on August 31 under suspension of the rules. The chamber approved the amended bill by voice vote, and the motion to reconsider was then laid on the table without objection.
That is a strong showing of bipartisan support, but one part of the popular description needs precision. Because the House used a voice vote rather than a recorded roll call, the official record does not identify how every member voted. It is accurate to say the measure passed without recorded opposition. It is less precise to describe the floor action as a documented unanimous vote by every member present.
The bipartisan character of the legislation is still clear from its path through committee. On June 3, the House Judiciary Committee ordered the amended bill reported by a 23-0 recorded vote. The committee later filed House Report 119-731 recommending that the legislation pass.
Rep. Abraham Hamadeh, R-Ariz., introduced the federal proposal after working with survivor advocate Kayleigh Kozak, whose experience with Arizona's criminal justice system helped inspire the state-level law that bears her name.
The legislation is deliberately narrow in one important respect. It does not create a lifetime no-contact order for every person convicted of any serious crime in the United States. It applies to covered federal convictions, including federal felony crimes of violence and federal felonies that include a sexual act or sexual conduct as an element, along with a list of specified federal trafficking, sexual-abuse, exploitation, stalking and related offenses.
For a covered conviction, the court would be required at sentencing to issue an order prohibiting contact with the victim if the victim files the motion, or if the federal government files it with the victim's consent.
The order would remain in effect for the natural life of the defendant unless it is suspended or terminated under the limited procedures written into the bill.
The definition of contact is broad. The House-passed text covers direct or indirect communication, transmission or physical interaction, including written, oral, electronic, digital and physical contact. It also reaches contact through an intermediary or automated or technological systems.
A violation would be punishable as contempt of court. The bill also says no fee may be assessed or collected from a victim in connection with obtaining the injunction.
The House-passed version includes a significant protection for victim autonomy that was not always captured in early summaries of the proposal. A victim could ask the court to suspend or terminate the injunction based on a pardon, commutation or a change in circumstances. A defendant could seek termination or suspension if the underlying conviction were dismissed or overturned on appeal. The court would hold a hearing on such a motion.
That means the proposal is designed to make protection permanent by default, not literally irreversible under every possible circumstance.
Supporters argue that the structure addresses a recurring gap in criminal cases: a no-contact condition may be tied to probation, supervised release or another part of a sentence, leaving a victim uncertain about what happens once that period ends.
Hamadeh has described the bill as a way to end what his office calls a legal tug-of-war in which survivors can be forced back into court years later simply to preserve separation from the person who harmed them.
The case of Kayleigh Kozak gives that argument a concrete history.
In written testimony submitted to the House Judiciary Committee, Kozak said she was sexually abused beginning at age 12 by a trusted teacher who was also her club soccer coach. Court records and reporting identify the offender as Joshua Jacobsen.
Kozak testified that Jacobsen was originally charged in Maricopa County with multiple offenses, including child molestation, sexual abuse, attempted sexual conduct with a minor and luring a minor for sexual exploitation.
He ultimately pleaded guilty to two Class 3 felonies, sexual abuse and luring a minor for sexual exploitation. Kozak told Congress that he served nine months in jail and received two terms of lifetime probation rather than a prison sentence.
Years later, Jacobsen sought to end the lifetime probation. Kozak has described receiving notice of that request as a new form of trauma because it required her to return to court and confront the possibility that the conditions separating her from her abuser could disappear.
In February 2026, Kozak again appeared in Maricopa County court as Jacobsen asked a judge to terminate his lifetime supervision. She urged the court to deny the request and said she remained evidence of the danger he had posed to a child while in a position of trust.
A Maricopa County judge denied Jacobsen's request in June. The court's ruling cited a history of probation problems that included unauthorized contact with children and violations of chaperone-related restrictions. Jacobsen remains on lifetime probation.
The federal legislation would not change Jacobsen's Arizona sentence because H.R. 8481 concerns federal convictions. His case instead serves as the policy example behind the effort: supporters want a no-contact order to stand independently from the duration of probation or supervised release so a victim's protection does not vanish if an offender's supervision ends.
Arizona law already provides a version of that approach. Under current Arizona statute, courts can issue lifetime injunctions at sentencing for victims of specified dangerous, serious, violent and sexual offenses. The injunction is effective immediately and remains in place unless the victim seeks to end it under the procedures established by state law.
Arizona also created procedures allowing certain victims whose offenders were sentenced before the law took effect to petition for an injunction. That retroactive feature is one reason advocates frequently describe Arizona's framework as especially broad.
Hamadeh's office says more than 1,000 Arizona survivors received lifetime protection during the law's first full year. Kozak gave the same figure in her congressional testimony. That number is part of the supporters' case for expansion, although it is best presented as a figure supplied by the bill's advocates rather than as an independently audited federal statistic.
Wisconsin has also enacted a version of Kayleigh's Law allowing permanent protection in specified sexual-assault cases. The state frameworks are not identical, and the federal proposal would not replace them.
The House bill expressly says nothing in the new federal section should be construed to limit the application of an order within the jurisdiction of any state. In practice, federal and state protective orders could coexist, depending on the underlying crime and the court system in which the conviction occurred.
That federal-state distinction is important because some descriptions of H.R. 8481 imply that passage would immediately give every American crime victim a federal lifetime shield. It would not. The House bill is tied to federal criminal convictions that meet its definition of a covered offense.
Victims of state crimes would continue to depend primarily on the laws of their own states unless the conduct were also prosecuted as a qualifying federal offense.
The proposal also does not apply before conviction. Hamadeh has emphasized that the lifetime restriction is a sentencing consequence imposed only after a defendant has been convicted of a covered offense.
That point matters to the due-process debate. The bill does not authorize a federal court to impose a natural-lifetime injunction merely because someone has been accused of violence or sexual misconduct. The trigger is a qualifying conviction, followed by a request from the victim or a government request made with the victim's consent.
At the same time, the breadth and permanence of the order make the bill a significant sentencing measure. A defendant who has completed prison, probation and supervised release could remain subject to the no-contact injunction for the rest of his or her life.
The House version therefore separates two ideas that are often treated as the same thing: completion of criminal supervision and a victim's right to continued separation from the offender.
Supporters say that is the central reform. They argue that a survivor should not lose protection simply because a sentence has run its course or because an offender later convinces a court to reduce supervision.
Kozak has summarized the principle in personal terms, saying the harm caused by sexual assault is not temporary and that protection should not be temporary either.
Hamadeh has framed the measure similarly. After House passage, he said justice is not complete if a victim still lives in fear and argued that survivors should not repeatedly have to fill out paperwork, return to court or face their attacker in order to maintain basic safety boundaries.
The bill's political path has been unusually smooth in the House. Hamadeh introduced H.R. 8481 on April 23. The Judiciary Committee considered and amended it in June, adopted an amendment offered by Rep. Andy Biggs by voice vote, and then reported the bill 23-0. The full House considered it under the expedited suspension procedure on August 31 and passed it by voice vote.
Kozak and members of her family were at the Capitol for the House action. Hamadeh has said he first met her years earlier during his Arizona political career and later promised, while campaigning for Congress, that he would make a federal version of the law one of his early legislative priorities.
He described the August vote as a promise kept.
The measure is not yet federal law.
Its next major hurdle is the Senate, where Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, has introduced S. 5372, a Senate version of Kayleigh's Law. The legislative record shows Lee introduced S. 5372 on August 7 and it was referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Lee's office publicly announced the measure in an August 12 press release.
That timing corrects another small but recurring error in coverage: August 12 was the date of Lee's public announcement, while the formal Senate introduction occurred on August 7.
Lee's bill follows the same central model. It applies to defendants convicted of covered violent or sexual offenses and would require a permanent no-contact order when requested by the victim or by the government with the victim's consent.
Lee has said victims of sexual crimes should not have to keep facing their abusers in court or fear unwanted contact after the criminal case is over. His office argues that a permanent order can provide a clearer and more durable boundary than temporary conditions attached to supervision.
As of September 4, S. 5372 remains before the Senate Judiciary Committee. The House-passed H.R. 8481 has cleared one chamber, but Congress has not yet sent a final measure to President Trump.
That makes claims that Kayleigh's Law is already a nationwide federal mandate premature. The House has acted. The Senate still has to act on the legislation, either by taking up the House bill or moving its own version, and any differences would have to be resolved before a final bill could reach the president.
The House vote nevertheless represents a substantial legislative milestone for a proposal that began as a survivor-led effort in Arizona.
The strongest factual description is straightforward: the House passed Kayleigh's Law on August 31 without recorded opposition in a voice vote after the Judiciary Committee had advanced it 23-0. The bill would require lifetime no-contact injunctions at sentencing for victims of specified federal violent and sexual offenses when requested, and it would keep those orders in force beyond prison, probation or supervised release unless one of the bill's limited termination procedures applies.
It would not automatically cover every state conviction, and a voice vote does not provide a member-by-member record proving literal unanimity.
May you like
Those qualifications do not reduce the significance of the proposal. They simply define what Congress actually passed.
For Kozak and the lawmakers supporting the bill, the objective is to make the victim's protection independent of the offender's changing custodial status. For the Senate, the question is now whether that principle will receive the same broad support it received in the House and become part of federal sentencing law before the end of the year.
