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Nancy Mace's Bills and the Rights of the Accused

Rep. Nancy Mace has used her House Oversight chairmanship and her 'leading voice on women's issues' brand to advance a series of measures that strip protections from the accused: a resolution to publish accusations the House Ethics Committee never proved (rejected 357-65), a takedown regime that removes online content on an unverified report, and a bill narrowing what a criminal defendant may show a jury. Named legal and civil-liberties critics, and members of both parties, warn these erode due process and tilt the process against the accused. This page documents those measures first, then the full verified ledger of her women's-safety bills.

Rep. Nancy Mace chairs the House Oversight subcommittee that handles much of this issue, calls herself "THE LEADING VOICE on women's issues in the party", and hangs a "NANCY MACE PROTECTS WOMEN" board outside her office. She has used that platform to advance a string of measures that do something her branding does not advertise: they remove protections from the people who are accused. A resolution to publish accusations the House Ethics Committee never proved. A takedown regime that pulls content offline on an unverified report. A bill that narrows what a criminal defendant may show a jury. Each is laid out below.

The objection is not partisan. Named legal and civil-liberties critics warn these measures put a thumb on the scale against the accused: the Electronic Frontier Foundation and a twelve-group coalition led by the Center for Democracy & Technology on the takedown bills, and members of both parties on the ethics-records resolution, which a bipartisan House rejected 357 to 65. The through-line is due process, the principle that a person should not lose their liberty, livelihood, or name on an accusation alone, and these are the bills critics say abandon it.

To be clear about the rest of the record: much of Mace's women's-safety portfolio is ordinary victim-protection work, some of it bipartisan, one piece signed into law. The full ledger is below. But this page leads with the measures where the rights of the accused are at stake, because that is the part of her influence a neutral bill list would miss.

The bills that target the rights of the accused

In three places, the "anti-accused" charge is not rhetoric. It is documented, by named critics or by settled constitutional doctrine.

1. Publishing unproven accusations: H.Res. 1100 (rejected 357-65)

Mace's resolution would have directed the House Ethics Committee to publicly release its records of alleged member sexual misconduct, including allegations the Committee never substantiated, with no mechanism for the consent of the people involved. The House rejected it 357-65 on March 4, 2026. The objection came from across the aisle: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez argued it was rushed, lacked due process, and risked exposing both the accused and victims to the release of unproven claims, and the House Ethics Committee itself warned the move would "chill victim cooperation." A measure built to broadcast unadjudicated accusations is the clearest example in her record of the problem critics describe. Full account: The House rejects Mace's bid to release unproven harassment records.

2. Takedown power without verification: the deepfake/NCII bills

Mace's RESPECT Act strengthens the TAKE IT DOWN Act takedown framework, and her other image-abuse bills sit in the same family. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (in an analysis titled, in part, Threatening Free Expression and Due Process) and a coalition of twelve organizations led by the Center for Democracy & Technology warn that this framework's 48-hour-removal mandate "contains no protections against frivolous or bad-faith takedown requests," gives platforms too little time to verify whether content is actually unlawful, and will sweep in lawful speech, satire, journalism, and political commentary. In a system with no verification and no penalty for a false report, the accused has no process before being removed. Full account: Mace's deepfake and takedown bills.

3. Narrowing the defense: the Rape Shield Enhancement Act

Mace's Rape Shield Enhancement Act would push the Federal Rules of Evidence further toward restricting what a defendant may introduce about an accuser and would narrow defense discovery into an accuser's records. Legal scholarship and reference authorities have long recognized that each expansion of rape-shield protection raises a countervailing constitutional question under the Sixth Amendment's Confrontation Clause and the accused's right to present a defense. The bill does not resolve that tension; it leans into it. Full account: Rape Shield Enhancement Act.

When lawmaking meets her own contested allegations

What sets Mace's case apart is that she has merged the legislative process with personal accusations that remain contested, unproven, and in active litigation. In her February 10, 2025 House floor speech she named four private citizens as predators; she mounted a poster of their faces outside her office; and at a May 20, 2025 Oversight subcommittee hearing she chaired, she displayed an image and named her ex-fiancé Patrick Bryant. All four men deny the allegations, no criminal charges have been filed, and the matters are the subject of ongoing civil litigation and a SLED inquiry; one man's federal defamation suit was dismissed on sovereign-immunity grounds, not on the truth of the claims. Nothing here is a finding of fact.

That record sits beside Mace's own posts on due process. In June 2025 she wrote "Due process is for citizens," which X's Community Notes corrected (the Constitution protects all "persons"), and which contradicted her own February 2023 statement that "everyone deserves the right to due process." A lawmaker who advances measures to publish unproven accusations and narrow the defense, while telling the public due process is not for everyone, is the reason this page exists. Readers can weigh her legislative posture against her stated view of the protection itself.

All named individuals deny the allegations referenced above. The accusations are contested and unproven; related litigation and a South Carolina State Law Enforcement Division investigation remain pending, and Mace denies the claims brought against her. For the parties, see People in the Public Record.

The full legislative record

For completeness, here is the verified ledger of Mace's women's-safety bills across the 117th through 119th Congresses, with links to the text on Congress.gov. Most are conventional; the three flagged above are the ones that raise the due-process problem. Across all subjects Mace has sponsored roughly 200 bills, only one of any kind enacted (a post-office renaming); see Congressional Career.

Image-based abuse: deepfakes and nonconsensual intimate imagery

  • Protect Victims of Digital Exploitation and Manipulation Act, H.R. 7567 (118th), reintroduced as H.R. 2564 (119th). Sponsor. Creates a federal criminal offense for producing or distributing AI-generated deepfake pornography of identifiable individuals without consent, up to five years. Introduced; in committee.
  • DEFIANCE Act of 2024, H.R. 7569 (118th). Original cosponsor (lead sponsor Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-NY). Creates a federal civil cause of action for victims of nonconsensual deepfake imagery. The Senate companion passed the Senate unanimously; the House bill did not get a floor vote.
  • Increased Accountability for Nonconsensual Pornography Act, H.R. 8180 (118th), reintroduced as H.R. 2373 (119th). Sponsor. Raises the maximum civil damages for nonconsensual intimate-image disclosure from $150,000 to $500,000 and broadens the definition of a covered "intimate image." Introduced; in committee.
  • RESPECT Act, H.R. 4600 (119th). Sponsor. Increases criminal penalties for sharing or threatening to share nonconsensual intimate images, including AI deepfakes, and is described by her office as building on and strengthening the TAKE IT DOWN Act (the Cruz-Klobuchar law signed in May 2025; Mace was not a sponsor of it but chaired the deepfake hearings that preceded it).
  • HONOR Act, H.R. 5090 (119th), per her office. Sponsor. Amends the Uniform Code of Military Justice to cover AI-generated deepfake imagery of service members and clarifies that consent to an image's creation is not consent to its distribution.

These measures, and the takedown framework Mace's RESPECT Act extends, are where the most detailed civil-liberties critique lands. See Mace's deepfake and takedown bills.

Voyeurism and covert recording

  • Stop VOYEURS Act, H.R. 7778 (118th), reintroduced as H.R. 1203 (119th). Sponsor. Expands the federal video-voyeurism statute (18 U.S.C. § 1801) and raises the maximum prison term from one year to five. Mace has tied the bill to her own stated experience as a voyeurism victim.
  • Sue VOYEURS Act, H.R. 1204 (119th) (listed on her office board as H.R. 8027 in the 118th). Sponsor. Creates a federal civil cause of action for video-voyeurism victims, with liquidated damages and attorney's fees.

Sexual-assault investigation and evidence

  • Rape Kit Backlog Progress Act of 2023, H.R. 5721 (118th). Co-lead sponsor with Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA). Conditions Byrne-JAG grant funding on states reporting their rape-kit inventory, DNA submission, CODIS uploads, and victim-notification protocols. Ordered reported by the House Judiciary Committee; no floor vote before the Congress ended.
  • Rape Shield Enhancement Act, H.R. 10094 (118th), reintroduced as H.R. 3596 (119th). Sponsor. Directs the Judicial Conference to recommend amendments to the Federal Rules of Evidence that would further restrict admissibility of an accuser's sexual history and narrow discovery into an accuser's private records. This is the one bill in her record that shifts the evidentiary balance toward the accuser and away from the defense; the constitutional tension it creates is set out at Rape Shield Enhancement Act.
  • Death Penalty for Child Rapists Act, H.R. 7702 (119th). Sponsor. Authorizes capital punishment for federal convictions of child sexual abuse, directly challenging the Supreme Court's 2008 ruling in Kennedy v. Louisiana. Introduced; in committee.

Military sexual trauma

  • VA Peer Support Enhancement for MST Survivors Act, H.R. 2724 (117th). Cosponsor (lead sponsor Rep. Antonio Delgado, D-NY). Enacted, Public Law 117-294, signed December 27, 2022. Establishes VA peer-support specialists for survivors of military sexual trauma.
  • Military Sexual Trauma Retirement Equity Act, H.R. 4452 (117th), reintroduced as H.R. 1082 (118th). Co-introducer (bipartisan; lead sponsor Rep. Deborah Ross, D-NC). Lets MST-disabled retirees receive both retirement pay and disability compensation.
  • FY2026 NDAA amendments. Per her office, three Mace amendments were adopted in the House-passed defense bill: forensic exams for civilian employees assaulted on DoD premises; expanded MST-resource training; and a death-penalty provision for child rape under the UCMJ.

Shelters and "women's spaces"

  • Safe Shelters Act, H.R. 10398 (118th), reintroduced as H.R. 1205 (119th), expanded as Safe Shelters for Survivors Act H.R. 7624 (119th). Sponsor. Bars registered sex offenders from federally funded emergency and (in the 2026 version) domestic-violence and homeless shelters.
  • Prison Rape Prevention Act, H.R. 10497 (118th), reintroduced as H.R. 1015 (119th). Sponsor. Bars housing biological males with female inmates and ends taxpayer-funded gender-affirming care in federal prisons. Framed as protecting incarcerated women; contested by opponents as primarily anti-transgender legislation.
  • Also listed on her office's "PROTECTS WOMEN" board (the board's own wording; see the poster record): H.R. 10290 "Stop the Invasion of Women's Spaces Act," H.R. 10186 "Protecting Women's Private Spaces Act," H.R. 8387 "VANISH Act," and H.Res. 1579 "Bathroom Bill" (the McBride restroom resolution). These "spaces" measures are widely characterized as transgender-policy bills carrying a women's-safety rationale.

Transparency, accountability, and other

  • Tax Fairness for Abuse Survivors Act, H.R. 6362 (119th). Sponsor. Provides relief from joint tax liability for domestic-abuse survivors who signed returns under duress.
  • Preventing Prosecutors from Protecting Predators Act, H.R. 6982 (119th). Sponsor. Requires large-city prosecutors receiving VAWA-related grants to file public reports on their handling of sex-crime cases, with funding cuts for non-compliance.
  • Directing the Ethics Committee to release sexual-harassment records, H.Res. 1072 (119th), revised as H.Res. 1100 (119th). Sponsor. Would have forced the public release of House Ethics records of alleged member sexual misconduct. The House rejected it 357-65 on March 4, 2026 over due-process objections. See the dispatch: The House rejects Mace's bid to release unproven harassment records.
  • Preventing Violence Against Women by Illegal Aliens Act, H.R. 30 (119th) (prior version H.R. 7909, 118th). Sponsor. Makes non-citizens inadmissible or deportable for sex offenses, domestic violence, or protective-order violations. Passed the House 274-145 on January 16, 2025. Its operative mechanism is immigration enforcement rather than survivor services.

The vote the other way: VAWA reauthorization

In 2022 Mace voted against the Violence Against Women Act Reauthorization Act, one of 172 House Republicans to do so; it passed and was signed into law. She defended the vote on specific policy grounds (objecting to its transgender-inclusion provisions and arguing it failed to address voyeurism, sextortion, and revenge porn), and pointed to her own bills as what she said VAWA should have contained. Critics, including the South Carolina Democratic Party, cast the vote as contradicting her women's-advocate branding.

Sources

See also