Sec. 2. Findings and purposes

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Congress finds the following: The SARS–CoV–2 virus that originated in China and causes the disease COVID–19 has caused untold misery and devastation throughout the world, including in the United States. For months, frontline health care workers and health care facilities have fought the virus with courage and resolve. They did so at first with very little information about how to treat the virus and developed strategies to save lives of the people of the United States in real time.

They risked their personal health and wellbeing to protect and treat their patients. Businesses in the United States kicked into action to produce and procure personal protective equipment, such as masks, gloves, face shields, and hand sanitizer, and other necessary medical supplies, such as ventilators, at unprecedented rates. To halt the spread of the disease, State and local governments took drastic measures. They shut down small and large businesses, schools, colleges and universities, religious, philanthropic and other nonprofit institutions, and local government agencies.

They ordered people to remain in their homes. This standstill was needed to slow the spread of the virus. But it devastated the economy of the United States. The sum of hundreds of local-level and State-level decisions to close nearly every space in which people might gather brought interstate commerce nearly to a halt. This halt led to the loss of millions of jobs. These lost jobs were not a natural consequence of the economic environment, but rather the result of a drastic, though temporary, response to the unprecedented nature of this global pandemic.

Congress passed a series of statutes to address the health care and economic crises—the Coronavirus Preparedness and Response Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2020 ( Public Law 116–123 ; 134 Stat. 146), the Families First Coronavirus Response Act ( Public Law 116–127 ; 134 Stat. 178), the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act or the CARES Act ( Public Law 116–136 ), and the Paycheck Protection Program and Health Care Enhancement Act ( Public Law 116–139 ; 134 Stat. 620).

In these laws Congress exercised its power under the Commerce and Spending Clauses of the Constitution of the United States to direct trillions of taxpayer dollars toward efforts to aid workers, businesses, State and local governments, health care workers, and patients. This legislation provided short-term insulation from the worst of the economic storm, but these laws alone cannot protect the United States from further devastation. Only reopening the economy so that workers can get back to work and students can get back to school can accomplish that goal.

The Constitution of the United States specifically enumerates the legislative powers of Congress. One of those powers is the regulation of interstate commerce. The Government is not a substitute for the economy, but it has the authority and the duty to act when interstate commerce is threatened and damaged. As applied to the present crisis, Congress can deploy its power over interstate commerce to promote a prudent reopening of businesses and other organizations that serve as the foundation and backbone of the national economy and of commerce among the States.

These include small and large businesses, schools (which are substantial employers in their own right and provide necessary services to enable parents and other caregivers to return to work), colleges and universities (which are substantial employers and supply the interstate market for higher-education services), religious, philanthropic and other nonprofit institutions (which are substantial employers and provide necessary services to their communities), and local government agencies.

Congress must also ensure that the Nation’s health care workers and health care facilities are able to act fully to defeat the virus. Congress must also safeguard its investment of taxpayer dollars under the CARES Act and other coronavirus legislation. Congress must ensure that those funds are used to help businesses and workers survive and recover from the economic crisis, and to help health care workers and health care facilities defeat the virus. CARES Act funds cannot be diverted from these important purposes to line the pockets of the trial bar.

One of the chief impediments to the continued flow of interstate commerce as this public-health crisis has unfolded is the risk of litigation. Small and large businesses, schools, colleges and universities, religious, philanthropic and other nonprofit institutions, and local government agencies confront the risk of a tidal wave of lawsuits accusing them of exposing employees, customers, students, and worshipers to coronavirus. Health care workers face the threat of lawsuits arising from their efforts to fight the virus.

They confront this litigation risk even as they work tirelessly to comply with the coronavirus guidance, rules, and regulations issued by local governments, State governments, and the Federal Government. They confront this risk notwithstanding equipment and staffing shortages. And they confront this risk while also grappling with constantly changing information on how best to protect employees, customers, students, and worshipers from the virus, and how best to treat it. These lawsuits pose a substantial risk to interstate commerce because they threaten to keep small and large businesses, schools, colleges and universities, religious, philanthropic and other nonprofit institutions, and local government agencies from reopening for fear of expensive litigation that might prove to be meritless.

These lawsuits further threaten to undermine the Nation’s fight against the virus by exposing our health care workers and health care facilities to liability for difficult medical decisions they have made under trying and uncertain circumstances. These lawsuits also risk diverting taxpayer money provided under the CARES Act and other coronavirus legislation from its intended purposes to the pockets of opportunistic trial lawyers. This risk is not purely local. It is necessarily national in scale.

A patchwork of local and State rules governing liability in coronavirus-related lawsuits creates tremendous unpredictability for everyone participating in interstate commerce and acts as a significant drag on national recovery. The aggregation of each individual potential liability risk poses a substantial and unprecedented threat to interstate commerce. The accumulated economic risks for these potential defendants directly and substantially affects interstate commerce. Individuals and entities potentially subject to coronavirus-related liability will structure their decisionmaking to avoid that liability.

Small and large businesses, schools, colleges and universities, religious, philanthropic and other nonprofit institutions, and local government agencies may decline to reopen because of the risk of litigation. They may limit their output or engagement with customers and communities to avoid the risk of litigation. These individual economic decisions substantially affect interstate commerce because, as a whole, they will prevent the free and fair exchange of goods and services across State lines.

Such economic activity that, individually and in the aggregate, substantially affects interstate commerce is precisely the sort of conduct that should be subject to congressional regulation. Lawsuits against health care workers and facilities pose a similarly dangerous risk to interstate commerce. Interstate commerce will not truly rebound from this crisis until the virus is defeated, and that will not happen unless health care workers and facilities are free to combat vigorously the virus and treat patients with coronavirus and those otherwise impacted by the response to coronavirus.

Subjecting health care workers and facilities to onerous litigation even as they have done their level best to combat a virus about which very little was known when it arrived in the United States would divert important health care resources from hospitals and providers to courtrooms. Such a diversion would substantially affect interstate commerce by degrading the national capacity for combating the virus and saving patients, thereby substantially elongating the period before interstate commerce could fully re-engage.

Congress also has the authority to determine the jurisdiction of the courts of the United States, to set the standards for causes of action they can hear, and to establish the rules by which those causes of action should proceed. Congress therefore must act to set rules governing liability in coronavirus-related lawsuits. These rules necessarily must be temporary and carefully tailored to the interstate crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic. They must extend no further than necessary to meet this uniquely national crisis for which a patchwork of State and local tort laws are ill-suited.

Because of the national scope of the economic and health care dangers posed by the risks of coronavirus-related lawsuits, establishing temporary rules governing liability for certain coronavirus-related tort claims is a necessary and proper means of carrying into execution Congress’s power to regulate commerce among the several States. Because Congress must safeguard the investment of taxpayer dollars it made in the CARES Act and other coronavirus legislation, and ensure that they are used for their intended purposes and not diverted for other purposes, establishing temporary rules governing liability for certain coronavirus-related tort claims is a necessary and proper means of carrying into execution Congress’s power to provide for the general welfare of the United States.

Pursuant to the powers delegated to Congress by article I, section 8, clauses 1, 3, 9, and 18, and article III, section 2, clause 1 of the Constitution of the United States, the purposes of this Act are to— establish necessary and consistent standards for litigating certain claims specific to the unique coronavirus pandemic; prevent the overburdening of the court systems with undue litigation; encourage planning, care, and appropriate risk management by small and large businesses, schools, colleges and universities, religious, philanthropic and other nonprofit institutions, local government agencies, and health care providers; ensure that the Nation’s recovery from the coronavirus economic crisis is not burdened or slowed by the substantial risk of litigation; prevent litigation brought to extract settlements and enrich trial lawyers rather than vindicate meritorious claims; protect interstate commerce from the burdens of potentially meritless litigation; ensure the economic recovery proceeds without artificial and unnecessary delay; protect the interests of the taxpayers by ensuring that emergency taxpayer support continues to aid businesses, workers, and health care providers rather than enrich trial lawyers; and protect the highest and best ideals of the national economy, so businesses can produce and serve their customers, workers can work, teachers can teach, students can learn, and believers can worship.

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