The House Just Passed a Lifetime No-Contact Order for Violent and Sexual-Crime Victims. “Not Until Probation Ends. For Life,” Its Sponsor Says.
- April 23, 2026 Rep. Abe Hamadeh (R-AZ-8) introduces H.R. 8481, “Kayleigh's Law Act of 2026,” in the House — GovInfo.gov
- 23-0 the House Judiciary Committee's bipartisan vote reporting the bill out of markup as amended, June 3, 2026 — GovInfo.gov
- Aug. 31, 2026 the full House passes H.R. 8481 by voice vote — no recorded opposition — Just the News
- 21 House co-sponsors, all Republican, in addition to Hamadeh — GovInfo.gov
This is not a bill about how long a name stays on a sex-offender registry. H.R. 8481, “Kayleigh’s Law Act of 2026,” changes what a federal judge is required to do at sentencing. Once a defendant is convicted of a federal felony that is a crime of violence or that involves a sexual act or sexual conduct, the court must — on motion by the victim or the government — issue a lifetime no-contact injunction against that defendant. It bars all direct or indirect contact with the victim for the rest of the defendant’s natural life, at no cost to the victim, and it does not expire when prison time, probation, or supervised release does.
On August 31, 2026, the full House passed it by voice vote — a unanimous-consent procedure reserved for bills with no organized opposition. Twenty-one co-sponsors, all Republican, backed Rep. Abe Hamadeh (R-AZ-8), a former Arizona prosecutor, on a bill named for a woman who is herself now one of its loudest advocates. It is not law yet. It still needs the Senate and a presidential signature.
Current federal practice leaves no-contact protection tied to the length of a sentence. A restraining order tends to run only as long as probation or supervised release does; once that period lapses, a survivor can find herself with no standing federal order at all, regardless of how the offender behaves once he is free. Kayleigh’s Law replaces that expiration date with a standing requirement: at sentencing, on a victim’s motion or the government’s, the court issues the injunction, and it runs for the defendant’s life.
Hamadeh has described the change in blunt terms. “When a predator is convicted, the court issues a lifetime no-contact order,” he said. “Not until probation ends. Not until some judge decides he’s ‘moved on.’ For life.” He has also framed it as a completion of the sentencing process itself: “Justice is not complete if the victim still lives in fear.”
The bill’s namesake, Kayleigh Kozak, is an Arizona mother of five who was sexually abused starting around age 12 or 13 by her middle-school P.E. teacher and soccer coach, Joshua Jacobsen. Jacobsen was convicted, but under a plea agreement that left Kozak, by her own account, with a punishment that did not match the harm — a short jail term paired with lifetime probation, a sentencing structure survivors and advocates have pointed to as an example of the exact gap Kayleigh’s Law is meant to close on the federal side.
Kozak turned her case into Arizona’s 2022 state “Kayleigh’s Law” and is now Family First Campaign Director at the America First Policy Institute, where she has publicly advocated for the federal version and testified at the April 29, 2026 House hearing on the bill. “No victim should ever have to endure the hell I had to walk through,” she has said. At the hearing, she put the underlying argument even more plainly: “The harm caused by sexual assault is not temporary. It is lifelong. The protections for those who have been sexually violated should be lifelong, too.”
“Kayleigh's Law” has been filed in California! @SenValladares thank you for sponsoring this bill in your home state! THANK YOU for fighting for victims! We are so grateful for you and your efforts! Victims endure so much, and they deserve actual lifelong, lasting protection.
Kozak’s advocacy has not been free of friction with Arizona Democrats. In 2023, Gov. Katie Hobbs (D-AZ) disinvited her as a National Crime Victims’ Rights Week keynote speaker after Kozak publicly criticized Hobbs’s veto of state child-protection bill SB 1253. It is a minor, sourced episode — not the center of this story — but it explains why Kozak arrived in Washington already fluent in the gap between victim-protection rhetoric and victim-protection votes.
Hamadeh introduced the bill on April 23, 2026. Six days later, the House Judiciary Crime Subcommittee, chaired by Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ-5), held a hearing titled “Peace of Mind: Strengthening Victim Protections Under Kayleigh’s Law.” Biggs has summed up the bill’s premise since: “Healing is not linear. Safety should not have an expiration date.” The full Judiciary Committee marked the bill up on June 3, reporting it out 23-0 as amended — a bipartisan vote before it ever reached the floor. It was placed on the House Union Calendar July 6 and passed by voice vote August 31.
Among the co-sponsors, two stand out for the roles they played: Biggs steered the bill through his subcommittee, and Rep. Juan Ciscomani (R-AZ-6), co-chair of the Crime Survivors and Justice Caucus, pushed it as caucus business rather than a one-off member bill. The rest of the co-sponsor list — including Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN-2), Rep. David Schweikert (R-AZ-1), and Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC-1) — is entirely Republican, 21 members in total. On the other side of the Capitol, Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) introduced a Senate companion on August 13, 2026, arguing that “victims of sexual crimes often have to face their abusers in court over and over again.”
Protect the victim. Stop the predator. End the revolving door. When a predator is convicted, the court issues a lifetime no-contact order. Not until probation ends. Not until some judge decides he's 'moved on.' For life.
No House Democrat voted against Kayleigh’s Law; it passed on a voice vote with no recorded opposition from either party. But at the April 29 hearing, Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) and Subcommittee Ranking Member Rep. Lucy McBath (D-GA) used their opening statements to raise a funding-context concern rather than a substantive objection to the bill itself. They pointed to roughly $500,000,000 in Trump-administration victim-services grant terminations — 373 grants canceled, 59 of them earmarked specifically for crime survivors — including the National Organization for Victim Assistance losing an $870,000 Victim Advocacy Corps grant.
Raskin and McBath also pointed to the federal Crime Victims Fund, the main pool that pays for victim-services grants nationwide, which fell from $13,000,000,000 in 2017 to roughly $1,000,000,000 at its low point under the Biden administration and now runs between $2,000,000,000 and $3,500,000,000 annually. “These lifesaving bills and others like them fall short of their potential without adequate funding,” McBath said. It is a fair point built into the record, not a partisan attack on the bill — the same Democrats raising it voted for the underlying legislation.
Kayleigh’s Law is modeled directly on Arizona’s 2022 state law of the same name, SB 1412, which reportedly helped more than 1,000 survivors secure lifetime protection orders in its first year alone. Similar state-level laws already exist in Wisconsin, Colorado, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia; the federal bill would extend the same lifetime-injunction concept to convictions in federal court, which state laws cannot reach. Rachel Wright, National Policy Director at Right on Crime — a conservative criminal-justice-reform group that testified in support — framed the mechanism simply: “Lifetime injunctions can keep an offender from contacting a victim he or she sexually or violently attacked.”
The House passed H.R. 8481, Kayleigh's Law, by voice vote.
None of it takes effect yet. H.R. 8481 now sits in the Senate alongside Lee’s companion bill, which has not yet been assigned a bill number as of publication. Both chambers, plus a presidential signature, stand between the House’s unanimous voice vote and an actual change to how federal courts sentence violent and sexual offenders.
“The harm caused by sexual assault is not temporary. It is lifelong. The protections for those who have been sexually violated should be lifelong, too.”
Kayleigh Kozak, testifying before the House Judiciary Crime Subcommittee, April 29, 2026
Kayleigh’s Law does not touch the sex-offender registry. It requires federal judges, at sentencing, to issue a lifetime no-contact injunction — on the victim’s request or the government’s — against anyone convicted of a federal violent or sexual felony, running for the offender’s natural life rather than expiring when probation does. It passed the House 23-0 out of committee and then by voice vote on the floor, with 21 Republican co-sponsors and no recorded Democratic opposition — though Reps. Raskin and McBath used the process to flag that hundreds of millions in victim-services funding cuts could blunt the law’s practical reach. It is not yet law; the Senate and the president still have to act.
