Civil Rights Cold Case Records Collection Reauthorization Act

Key Points

• This bill gives the Civil Rights Cold Case Records Review Board more time to do its work. Instead of ending after seven years, the board will now have 11 years to find and release documents about unsolved civil rights crimes.
• It provides money to help local and state governments share their files. The federal government will pay them back for the costs of scanning, copying, and mailing old records so that these documents can be added to the national collection.
• The policy makes it harder for the government to keep old secrets. For any records made before 1990, the government can no longer use certain privacy rules to block the public from seeing the information.
• The main goal is to make sure the public can learn the full history of civil rights cases that were never solved. Congress believes that these records should be made public immediately to help families and historians find the truth.

Impact Analysis

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