Show-Me State Times

U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, along with U.S. Senator Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, introduced bipartisan legislation to ensure all contractors working with children are authorized to have a nationwide background check.

The new bill, which would amend the National Child Protection Act of 1993 (NCPA), aims to expand mandatory nationwide background checks for all individuals under contract with a school.

"Background checks for childcare workers are common sense. My legislation with Senator Durbin fixes an oversight in the law and will help keep American kids safe. Parents should be assured that everyone who works with their kids, even contractors, has been thoroughly vetted," said Hawley.

"When parents drop their kids off at school, they shouldn’t have to worry if their children are safe in the care of the school’s faculty. While the Child Protection Improvements Act was passed with the intent of keeping children safe, it created an inadvertent complication in securing nationwide background checks for all personnel with unsupervised access to children, namely contractors hired by schools," said Durbin. "Schools and other state agencies often rely on contractors for a number of services geared toward children, including safe transportation. I’m introducing bipartisan legislation with Senator Hawley to correct the current patchwork approach to securing nationwide background checks for contractors who work with children."

Senator Hawley’s bipartisan legislation would reverse the narrowing of nationwide background checks inadvertently put in place by the Child Protection Improvements Act of 2018.

Full bill text is available here.