The ADOPT Act of 2025 adds a new Section 228A to Title 18 that makes three categories of conduct criminal when connected to interstate or foreign commerce: (1) providing unlicensed adoption intermediary services for compensation; (2) placing certain adoption advertisements; and (3) giving a placing parent more than $2,500 in value before that parent consults a licensed child-placing agency or a state-licensed attorney. The bill defines key terms, enumerates narrow exceptions (licensed public and private agencies, licensed attorneys, certain 501(c)(3) contractors, and accredited intercountry adoption providers), and uses multiple interstate-commerce hooks to create federal jurisdiction.
This shifts part of adoption regulation from a state licensing and civil-enforcement model into the federal criminal sphere. Compliance officers, online platforms, payment processors, licensed agencies, and attorneys who work with private domestic interstate adoptions will need to reassess intake, advertising, payments, and recordkeeping practices to avoid felony exposure for individuals and organizational fines for entities.
At a Glance
What It Does
The bill defines 'adoption advertising' and 'adoption intermediary services' and makes it a federal offense to publish such advertising, provide intermediary services for compensation, or deliver more than $2,500 in value to a placing parent before that parent consults a licensed agency or state attorney. It then creates multiple interstate-commerce triggers (travel, wire/computer communications, payments, conduct affecting commerce) to establish federal jurisdiction.
Who It Affects
Unlicensed facilitators and paid intermediaries operating across state lines, online marketplaces and social-media platforms that host paid adoption ads, payment processors handling adoption-related transfers, licensed child-placing agencies and adoption attorneys (through new compliance dynamics), and placing and prospective adoptive parents involved in private domestic interstate adoptions.
Why It Matters
For the first time Congress would criminalize a set of adoption marketplace activities at the federal level, not merely leave them to state licensing and civil remedies. The law targets the online and cross-border features of modern private adoptions and could reshape advertising, payment flows, and intermediated matching in the domestic adoption sector.
More articles like this one.
A weekly email with all the latest developments on this topic.
What This Bill Actually Does
The ADOPT Act creates a single new statutory provision that bundles definitions, three distinct offenses, jurisdictional hooks, penalties, and a short rule of construction preserving existing federal adoption statutes and state authority. It starts by defining key terms: paid "adoption advertising" (broadly covering paid media that solicits placing or adoptive parents or promises to cover a placing parent's expenses) and "adoption intermediary services" (any compensated activity that solicits or links placing parents and prospective adoptive parents).
Those definitions are intentionally wide to capture modern online ads and matching activity.
The bill then makes three prohibited acts: providing adoption intermediary services for compensation; placing adoption advertising as defined; and providing "any thing of value" (money, services, medical care, etc.) in excess of $2,500 to a placing parent before that parent has a consultation with a private licensed child-placing agency or a state-licensed attorney. Each prohibition has enumerated exceptions: public child-placing agencies, private licensed child-placing agencies, licensed attorneys, certain 501(c)(3) organizations acting under contract with a public agency, and authorized intercountry adoption providers.To reach conduct that would otherwise be purely intrastate or local, the statute lists multiple bases for federal jurisdiction: travel in interstate or foreign commerce, use of wire or computer communications, payments or transfers through interstate channels, conduct that occurs within U.S. territorial jurisdiction, or conduct that otherwise affects interstate commerce.
Violations carry criminal penalties for individuals (up to 5 years imprisonment and fines up to $50,000 per violation) and civil-penalty-style fines for organizations ($100,000 per violation). The Act preserves the Indian Child Welfare Act and the Intercountry Adoption Act and allows states to adopt stricter standards.
It takes effect 120 days after enactment and makes minor clerical edits to chapter headings and tables.
The Five Things You Need to Know
The statute bars giving a placing parent more than $2,500 in money, property, or services in connection with the birth and in furtherance of an adoption if that payment occurs before the placing parent consults a private licensed child-placing agency or a state-licensed attorney.
An individual who violates the advertising, intermediary, or payment prohibitions faces up to 5 years in prison and fines up to $50,000 per violation; organizations face fines of $100,000 per violation.
The definitions of 'adoption advertising' and 'adoption intermediary services' explicitly cover paid online ads, billboard, radio/TV, and acting 'as a link' between placing parents and prospective adoptive parents, capturing modern digital matching and referral activity.
Enumerated exceptions exempt public child-placing agencies, state-licensed private child-placing agencies, attorneys licensed in the state where services occur, certain 501(c)(3) organizations contracting with public agencies, and accredited intercountry adoption service providers.
Federal jurisdiction is triggered broadly—travel in interstate commerce, use of wire/computer communications, payments through interstate channels, transmission in interstate commerce, conduct occurring in U.S. territorial jurisdiction, or conduct otherwise affecting interstate commerce.
Section-by-Section Breakdown
Every bill we cover gets an analysis of its key sections.
Objectives: curb exploitation and expand access to licensed providers
This short section states the bill’s goals: protecting families from unlicensed intermediaries, steering placing parents to licensed providers, and preventing the commodification of children. Practically, the purpose language signals prosecutorial and interpretive intent—courts and agencies will read the criminal provisions through the lens of exploitation prevention and consumer protection rather than as a neutral regulation of commercial speech.
Broad definitional framework for ads, intermediaries, and agencies
The statute defines 'adoption advertising' to include paid communications that solicit placing or adoptive parents or offer to pay a placing parent’s expenses; 'adoption intermediary services' covers compensated solicitation and matchmaking activity and acting 'as a link.' It also sets out who counts as a placing parent, public child-placing agency, and private licensed child-placing agency. These definitions are the fulcrum for application: they determine whether a social-media post, a classified listing, or an informal facilitator falls inside the statute.
Criminal prohibitions on paid intermediaries and advertising with enumerated exceptions
Subsection (b) criminalizes knowingly providing adoption intermediary services in any of the circumstances listed in subsection (e); subsection (c) criminalizes knowingly placing adoption advertising. Both subsections carve out exceptions for public agencies, state-licensed private agencies, attorneys licensed in the state of activity, certain 501(c)(3) contractors, and approved intercountry adoption service providers. The exceptions focus enforcement on unlicensed, for-profit intermediaries while preserving licensed professional and government pathways.
Pre-consultation payment limit and its narrow exceptions
Subsection (d) bars providing any thing of value (including medical care or living expenses) exceeding $2,500 to a placing parent before that parent consults a private licensed child-placing agency or a state-licensed attorney; payments made by licensed agencies, licensed attorneys, or under government programs are exempt. The timing element—'before consultation'—is critical in practice and will drive new intake and recordkeeping practices to document when consultations occurred relative to payments.
Interstate-commerce hooks to federalize enforcement
Subsection (e) sets out six alternative bases for federal jurisdiction: interstate or foreign travel related to the conduct, use of interstate means (wires, computers), payments via interstate channels, transmission in interstate commerce, conduct within U.S. territories, or any conduct affecting interstate commerce. The multiplicity of hooks is designed to capture online ads, cross-state facilitators, and any payments routed through national payment systems.
Sanctions and preservation of existing adoption laws
Subsection (f) sets the sanctions—individuals face fines up to $50,000 and up to 5 years imprisonment per violation; organizations face $100,000 fines per violation. Subsection (g) preserves the Indian Child Welfare Act and the Intercountry Adoption Act and explicitly allows states to impose stricter requirements, signaling that the federal statute is a floor rather than a ceiling for regulatory rigor.
120-day effective date and housekeeping changes
The Act becomes effective 120 days after enactment and inserts the new section and chapter-table entries into Title 18. The delayed effective date gives agencies, platforms, and practitioners a short runway to revise policies, but it does not provide funding or implementation guidance, so initial compliance choices will be made without federal rulemaking or technical assistance.
This bill is one of many.
Codify tracks hundreds of bills on Criminal Justice across all five countries.
Explore Criminal Justice in Codify Search →Who Benefits and Who Bears the Cost
Every bill creates winners and losers. Here's who stands to gain and who bears the cost.
Who Benefits
- Placing parents who are vulnerable to coercion or exploitation — the statute restricts paid solicitations and large pre-consultation payments, aiming to reduce economic pressure on birth parents.
- Licensed child-placing agencies and state-licensed adoption attorneys — the law reduces competition from unlicensed facilitators and formalizes exceptions that privilege licensed providers.
- Children who are the subject of private domestic interstate adoptions — by criminalizing commercialized placements and large pre-consultation payments, the statute seeks to reduce transactional arrangements that can undermine child welfare.
Who Bears the Cost
- Unlicensed intermediaries and private facilitators who broker adoptions for compensation — the bill converts many previously civil or state-licensed risks into federal criminal exposure, raising legal and compliance costs.
- Online platforms and marketplace services hosting paid adoption ads — platforms will face tougher moderation choices and potential downstream liability for facilitating prohibited advertising or payments.
- Payment processors and financial intermediaries — broad interstate-payment jurisdiction and the $2,500 threshold will force processors to tighten onboarding and monitoring for adoption-related flows, increasing compliance costs and false positives.
Key Issues
The Core Tension
The bill pits two legitimate goals against one another: protecting placing parents and children from exploitative, commercialized adoptions by imposing federal criminal penalties, versus preserving lawful, accessible private adoption pathways and free-flowing information and payments; criminalization reduces exploitation risk but may also push matching underground, chill helpful peer-to-peer connections and advertising, and raise First Amendment and federalism questions that have no simple technical fix.
The Act solves a clear problem—paid, unregulated intermediaries operating across state lines—but it creates real doctrinal and implementation challenges. The statutory definitions are deliberately broad and sweep in modern digital activity, which raises free-speech and vagueness questions about what counts as "advertising" vs. informational speech and what conduct constitutes "acting as a link." Prosecutors and courts will need to draw lines between protected speech and criminal solicitation.
The $2,500 threshold and the timing requirement ('before consultation') impose a bright-line test, but practical application depends on how 'consultation' is documented and what constitutes reimbursement or permissible assistance under government programs.
Enforcement feasibility is another issue. The law relies heavily on interstate-commerce hooks (wire transmissions, payments, travel) to reach online posts and out-of-state facilitators; that broad jurisdictional language will capture many actors but also invites defense challenges.
Criminalizing intermediary services risks driving matching and payments into untraceable cash arrangements or encrypted channels, complicating protection goals. Finally, while the rule of construction preserves ICWA and the Intercountry Adoption Act and allows states to be stricter, it does not resolve potential conflicts where state law permits certain facilitator activities that the federal statute criminalizes, or where state licensing frameworks differ widely—creating uneven enforcement across jurisdictions.
Try it yourself.
Ask a question in plain English, or pick a topic below. Results in seconds.