Four Federal Bills Take Aim at Surrogacy: What They Say, Why We Oppose Them, and How to Make Your Voice Heard

For the first time, Congress is moving to regulate surrogacy agreements at the federal level. Unfortunately, they are doing so not quite in ways that support families. Four bills introduced in the 119th Congress would significantly alter how surrogacy operates nationwide. Although all four of them remain in the House or Senate Committees and none has become law, they do deserve your attention. With two of them introduced as recently as June 2026,  intended parents, surrogates, and agencies should understand what they say now before they advance to committee hearings.

This article explains each bill, why we believe each one is flawed, and what you can do about it. At the end of this post, you will find a tool that generates a letter to your Representative or Senators opposing the bills you select.

H.R. 9131: The Protecting Kids from Creeps Act

H.R. 9131 was introduced by U.S. Representative Scott Perry of Pennsylvania on June 3, 2026. It responds to a real case: Brandon Keith Riley-Mitchell, a registered tier 1 sex offender in Pennsylvania, obtained a child through surrogacy after pursuing an independent journey without a surrogacy agency. 

We want to be clear at the outset that keeping sex offenders out of surrogacy is a goal we support. Screening of intended parents is already standard practice at all reputable agencies, and the case that prompted this bill appears to be a case without an agency. However, while the bill is marketed to the public as a safety measure to compel stricter vettings, the text contains no screening requirement at all. It does not say what a background check must include, who must run it, or when. Rather than setting a preventive standard, it moves directly to criminal punishment that could chill the industry. 

It creates a new federal crime, 18 U.S.C. section 2260B, targeting "surrogacy agencies" broadly. According to the bill, a surrogacy agency means "any entity in the United States that facilitates, arranges, procures, or otherwise assists in the formation or execution of a surrogacy agreement." Note that this would appear to include all employees of an agency, and attorneys for the parties, and even notaries, as they may assist in the formation or execution of a surrogacy agreement.

The legislation carries the following features:

• An agency (including its officers) that "recklessly" facilitates a surrogacy agreement where any party is a sex offender faces a mandatory minimum of 10 years in prison. An agency acting "knowingly" faces a mandatory minimum of 20 years, as does any individual employee who knowingly facilitates such an agreement. There is no definition of “reckless” or “knowingly” in the statute. 

• "Sex offender" is defined as anyone who is, or at any time was, required to register under the federal Adam Walsh Act (34 U.S.C. § 20913). That definition has no tiers, no time limit, and no relevance requirement. A person required to register decades ago for a Tier 1 offense, the lowest-severity classification, who has long since been removed from the registry, is treated identically to a current Tier 3 offender.

• The surrogacy agreement itself becomes void and unenforceable, and custody of any child born under it is decided through best-interests litigation in the surrogate's home state, with the agreement given no effect.

Why we oppose H.R. 9131 as written

Our objection is not to the goal of protecting children from predatory actors. The problem is that the bill treats a generally non-existent problem to regulate agencies by relying on a case where no agency was used. Nearly all agencies utilize background checks on intended parents and surrogates and their partners or spouses. This is done because they provide a service and need to ensure that the parties know whether the other party has any criminal record, which might be disqualifying, or which the other party has a right to know about. Note that misdemeanors and expunged cases may not get discovered in background checks if they are over ten years old, so some sex offenses may not come up in a background check. 

A 10-year mandatory minimum imprisonment for recklessness is extraordinary in federal criminal law. Recklessness is a civil negligence-adjacent standard, and the bill gives agencies no safe harbor. An agency that runs a professional background check and misses an old, out-of-state registration that no longer appears in any database could still face an argument that it acted recklessly, with a decade in prison as the floor, while the underlying sex offense of a party could have been a misdemeanor with no prison time.  The lifetime definition of "sex offender" compounds the problem. Because it sweeps in anyone ever required to register, regardless of tier, offense, or how long ago, it bars people from parenthood for life with no individualized review. Even adoption law, which the sponsors cite as their model, does not do so in such absolute terms.

Finally, voiding the contract punishes the wrong people. Anyone who facilitates a surrogacy contract that includes a party who is a “sex offender” will be sentenced to ten or more years in prison. Thus, if in an independent journey, an attorney for the surrogate did not do a background check of the gestational carrier, her partner, or the intended parents, or did not ask for the background checks performed by the agency, he or she could be sentenced to major prison time. 

In addition, if a contract is voided, the surrogate, who did nothing wrong, may be left as the presumed legal parent of a child she never intended to parent, with her compensation and legal protections erased along with the agreement. If it is the case that the partner/spouse of the surrogate or the surrogate herself was a prior sex offender, it is the intended parents who did nothing wrong. Why would the contract be voided in this situation? In many such cases, the child could end up in the foster care system. Congress could achieve its intended goal by mandating background checks in surrogacy and delegating who is responsible for obtaining them, providing a clear standard with safe harbor protections for compliant agencies and proportional penalties, or leave the matters to the states. H.R. 9131 does neither.

H.R. 9132: The Preventing International Surrogacy Exploitation Act

H.R. 9132, also introduced by Representative Perry on June 3, 2026, has been described as targeting "adversarial nations" and birth tourism. Its actual scope is considerably broader.

It voids any surrogacy agreement between a surrogate in the United States and a prospective parent who is a "foreign national," defined as any alien under the Immigration and Nationality Act.  This covers people from every country.

The bill contains one exception: an agreement survives if there are two prospective parents, they are legally married, and at least one is a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident. This leaves out a significant portion of international families who use U.S. surrogacy:  a married couple from Toronto, a couple from Paris or Israel whose home country prohibits surrogacy,  or a single intended parent from anywhere abroad. The bill also imposes up to 10 years in prison on any broker who knowingly or recklessly facilitates such an agreement, sends custody of children born under voided agreements to a best-interests-of-the-child litigation in the surrogate's state, and strips the foreign parent of any immigration benefit arising from being the parent of their own U.S. citizen child. 

H.R. 7040 and S. 3101: The SAFE KIDS Act

The Stopping Adversarial Foreign Exploitation of Kids In Domestic Surrogacy Act exists in two versions: S. 3101, introduced by Senator Rick Scott of Florida in November 2025, and H.R. 7040, introduced by Representative Blake Moore of Utah on January 13, 2026. Both are narrower than H.R. 9132. They void surrogacy agreements only where the prospective parent is a citizen or permanent resident of a "foreign entity of concern," a list defined in federal procurement law that covers China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. The same married-couple exception applies. The House bill imposes up to one year in prison on brokers who facilitate a voided agreement, and custody again goes to best-interests litigation, with the contract given no weight.

The bills' findings cite a criminal investigation in Arcadia, California, involving a couple who had fourteen or more children from surrogates they raised in a compound, and frame the issue as a national security threat. It is not clear from the reporting on this case that the bill would actually have prevented this couple from pursuing surrogacy, as they may be permanent residents or citizens. 

Why we oppose all three international bills

The conduct these bills cite, human trafficking, immigration fraud, and the sale of children, are federal crimes today, and the Arcadia case the sponsors point to is being investigated under those existing laws. However, in our experience, surrogacy in the United States does not involve any of these things. Nearly all international intended parents come to the US for surrogacy because they want children of their own.

The motivation of these bills appears more aligned with the Trump administration’s opposition to so-called “anchor babies” and birth tourism, which inspired its Executive Order on birthright citizenship. Surrogacy, from our experience, does not operate this way.  In all the cases we have represented international intended parents, they have always returned to their home countries with their children. They enter legally and leave as soon as the travel documents or passport is received, as their desire to return home with their child is compelling. Most of the time, the intended parents will obtain citizenship in their home country for their child. In rare cases where the child does not, the child can make the decision at age 18. The child cannot cause “chain migration” to the United States, as they cannot sponsor the parents to immigrate to the US until they turn age 21.  We are not aware of international children born in the US through surrogacy, living in another country, and then sponsoring their parents for green cards at age 21. If the bill sponsors had evidence of this taking place, it surely would be produced. Even if it were considered an abuse of the system, the immigration law could be changed rather than applying it to surrogacy.

What the bills actually reach is the lawful, regulated path: agreements negotiated with independent counsel for both sides, with escrow accounts, insurance requirements, psychological screening, and court-issued parentage judgments under state laws like California Family Code sections 7960 through 7962, New York's Child-Parent Security Act, and the Illinois Gestational Surrogacy Act. That contract is the surrogate's primary protection. It is what guarantees her compensation, secures her health coverage, and preserves her authority over her own medical care. Declaring it void does not protect her from exploitation. It removes her ability to enforce anything against the intended parents while she is pregnant with their child.

The bills are just as hard on the children they are named for. When an agreement is void, custody is decided through litigation in which the agreement counts for nothing. A surrogate can be left as the legal parent of a child genetically unrelated to her, against her wishes and the intended parents' wishes alike. H.R. 9132 goes further and bars the foreign parent from any immigration benefit through their own child, making it harder for that child to live with their parents, an outcome difficult to square with a bill titled to prevent exploitation.

None of the three bills would actually prevent the problematic scenarios in the cases they rely on, nor do they add a single protective requirement. None of these three bills relies on the input or suggestions of actual surrogacy industry professionals or intended parents and surrogates. 

Finally, surrogacy and parentage have always been matters of state family law. States that have regulated surrogacy carefully, over decades, would see those frameworks overridden for a class of families defined by the passport they hold.

It should also be noted that when international intended parents turn to the United States for surrogacy, it results in a windfall for the United States economy. At least a quarter million dollars is typically spent by international intended parents, and this goes to support the surrogate and her family, the agency that employs Americans, American physicians, and lawyers. International intended parents have the means to pay for health care for the child, and the public welfare system is not used for medical expenses for either the surrogate or the child. The bills provide no good reasons for banning international intended parents, only speculation and stereotypes about foreigners’ intentions. 

Where the bills stand

All four bills have been introduced and referred to the Judiciary Committee in their respective chambers. None has passed either chamber. H.R. 9131 and H.R. 9132 were introduced on June 3, 2026, and announced at a press conference the following day. Introduction is a long way from enactment, but bills like this could move quickly if there is no opposition, and representatives might believe these bills will be popular if their constituents do not voice opposition.

What you can do

If you are an intended parent, a surrogate, an agency professional, or simply someone who believes families should not be defined by citizenship, tell your members of Congress. The House bills (H.R. 9131, H.R. 9132, and H.R. 7040) are before the House, so write to your Representative. S. 3101 is before the Senate, so write to your two Senators.

Use the letter generator below. Check the bills you oppose, fill in your information, and it will produce a letter you can copy into your legislator's contact form, email, or print and mail. If you do not know who represents you, you can look up your Representative at house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative and your Senators at senate.gov.

Questions about your surrogacy journey?

Tsong Law Group represents intended parents, surrogates, and donors in California, New York, Illinois, Washington, Arizona, and Oklahoma, including many international intended parents building their families through U.S. surrogacy. If you have questions about how proposed legislation could affect your journey, or you are ready to start one, contact us at info@tsonglaw.com or 877-992-3678 to schedule a consultation.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Legislation described here is pending and subject to change.