ADOPT Act of 2025
Summary
What This Bill Does
Creates federal criminal penalties for certain paid adoption intermediary services, adoption advertising, and large pre-consultation payments to placing parents outside licensed or otherwise exempt channels.
Who Benefits and How
Licensed agencies, licensed attorneys, and families using regulated adoption channels gain protections against unlicensed for-profit intermediary practices.
Who Bears the Burden and How
Unlicensed adoption intermediaries and advertisers face new federal criminal exposure and financial penalties.
Key Provisions
- Defines covered adoption advertising and adoption intermediary services.
- Creates federal penalties for knowingly providing unlicensed paid intermediary services or placing covered adoption advertisements.
- Bars certain payments above $2,500 to placing parents before consultation with a licensed agency or attorney, subject to exemptions.
Evidence Chain:
This summary is generated from the full bill text using AI analysis. Expand "Detailed Analysis" below for identified beneficiaries/burden bearers.
At a Glance
What This Bill Does
Creates federal criminal penalties for certain paid adoption intermediary services, adoption advertising, and large pre-consultation payments to placing parents outside licensed or otherwise exempt channels.
Key Policy Areas
Social Welfare, Criminal Justice, Government Operations
Primary Purpose
Creates federal criminal penalties for certain paid adoption intermediary services, adoption advertising, and large pre-consultation payments to placing parents outside licensed or otherwise exempt channels.
Policy Domains
Main Provisions
Identified Gains
Contextual inference, no direct clause citation- Licensed adoption agencies and attorneys
- Families and placing parents using regulated adoption channels
Contextual inference, no direct clause citation
Identified Costs
Contextual inference, no direct clause citation- Unlicensed adoption intermediaries and advertisers
Contextual inference, no direct clause citation
Sponsors
Legislative Progress
In CommitteeMr. Aderholt (for himself, Mr. Davis of Illinois, Ms. Lee …
Referred to the House Committee on the Judiciary.
Introduced in House
Stakeholder Effects
cui bono?How this legislation distributes effects. Mention counts reflect frequency, not effect magnitude.
Unlicensed adoption intermediaries and advertisers
Bill Structure & Actor Mappings
Who is "The Secretary" in each section?
We use a combination of our own taxonomy and classification in addition to large language models to assess meaning and potential beneficiaries. High confidence means strong textual evidence. Always verify with the original bill text.
Learn more about our methodology