George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2025
Key claim: The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2025 would raise federal law-enforcement accountability by lowering the intent standard for criminal civil-rights prosecutions, limiting qualified immunity, restricting chokeholds and no-knock warrants, barring racial profiling, and creating a National Police Misconduct Registry plus training and accreditation mandates.
Abstract
(HR5361 · 119th Congress) George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2025 This bill addresses a wide range of policies and issues regarding policing practices and law enforcement accountability. It increases accountability for law enforcement misconduct, restricts the use of certain policing practices, enhances transparency and data collection, and establishes best practices and training requirements. The bill enhances existing enforcement mechanisms to remedy violations by law enforcement. Among other things, it does the following: lowers the criminal intent standard—from willful to knowing or reckless—to convict a law enforcement officer for misconduct in a federal prosecution, limits qualified immunity as a defense to liability in a private civil action against a law enforcement officer, and grants administrative subpoena power to the Department of Justice (DOJ) in pattern-or-practice investigations. It establishes a framework to prevent and remedy racial profiling by law enforcement at the federal, state, and local levels. It also limits the unnecessary use of force and restricts the use of no-knock warrants, chokeholds, and carotid holds. The bill creates a national registry—the National Police Misconduct Registry—to compile data on complaints and records of police misconduct. It also establishes new reporting requirements, including on the use of force, officer misconduct, and routine policing practices (e.g., stops and searches). Finally, it directs DOJ to create uniform accreditation standards for law enforcement agencies and requires law enforcement officers to complete training on racial profiling, implicit bias, and the duty to intervene when another officer uses excessive force. Latest action (2025-09-15): Referred to the Committee on the Judiciary, and in addition to the Committees on Armed Services, and Energy and Commerce, for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the committee concerned.
Why this matters
The bill packages the principal federal levers for police accountability — criminal-intent standards, civil qualified immunity, use-of-force rules, profiling prohibitions, and a national misconduct database — into a single vehicle whose passage would materially change the legal exposure of officers and the remedies available to people harmed by police conduct. Because prior versions passed the House but stalled in the Senate, the 2025 reintroduction is largely a signaling and coalition-maintenance step rather than an imminent change in law. Its provisions intersect with several adjacent civil-rights workstreams, from § 242 prosecutions to body-camera funding and the right to record.