S778-119

What This Bill Does

The Lactation Spaces for Veteran Moms Act adds a new title 38 requirement that each Department of Veterans Affairs medical center contain a lactation space. The space must be hygienic, not a bathroom, shielded from view, free from intrusion, accessible to disabled individuals including wheelchair users, equipped with a chair and working surface, easy to locate, clearly identified with signage, and available for women veterans and members of the public to express breast milk. The Senate-passed version phases compliance: at least 80 percent of VA medical centers within two years and all VA medical centers within three years.

Who Benefits and How

Women veterans, breastfeeding visitors, disabled nursing parents, families visiting VA facilities, VA patient advocates, and congressional veterans committees benefit from a concrete facility standard instead of ad hoc private-space arrangements. Nursing parents gain reliable access to a non-bathroom room with privacy, a work surface, a chair, accessibility, and signage when receiving care or visiting a VA medical center.

Who Bears the Burden and How

The Secretary of Veterans Affairs, VA medical center directors, facility managers, accessibility coordinators, construction and maintenance staff, signage teams, and VA congressional-reporting staff must identify existing gaps, design or retrofit rooms, verify accessibility, maintain the spaces, and report annually on which medical centers have compliant lactation spaces and when noncompliant sites will open them.

Key Provisions

• Adds title 38 section 1720M requiring each VA medical center to contain a lactation space.
• Requires lactation spaces to be hygienic, non-bathroom, private, intrusion-free, wheelchair-accessible, equipped with a chair and working surface, easy to locate, signed, and open to women veterans and the public.
• Requires at least 80 percent of VA medical centers to comply within two years and all VA medical centers to comply within three years.
• Requires annual reports to the House and Senate Veterans' Affairs Committees listing compliant and noncompliant medical centers and timelines for opening spaces.
• Protects existing facility-access rules by clarifying that the lactation-space requirement does not authorize entry into restricted VA areas.