To amend the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 to extend the authorities of title VII of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 through April 30, 2026, and for other purposes.
H.R. 8322
Replaces the rolling FISA Title VII sunset ('two years after RISAA enactment') with a fixed expiration date of April 30, 2026, extending Section 702 warrantless foreign-intelligence surveillance authority by a short bridge period after Congress failed to pass longer-term reauthorizations.
Section 702 lets the government collect foreign targets' electronic communications without a warrant, incidentally sweeping in Americans' messages; a federal court ruled backdoor searches of that data unconstitutional in 2025, the FISA Court found ongoing compliance violations across multiple agencies in March 2026, and this law extends those contested authorities with no corrective provisions whatsoever.
Amends Section 403(b)(1) of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 to replace the rolling repeal trigger — 'effective two years after the date of enactment of the Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act' — with a fixed repeal date of April 30, 2026, for Title VII of FISA (50 U.S.C. 1881 et seq.), which is the statutory home of Section 702 surveillance authority.
Bill textSec. 1(a)(1)Amends Section 403(b)(2) of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 to apply the same fixed April 30, 2026 date to the parallel 18 U.S.C. 2511 note provision, which governs the electronic surveillance authorization that runs alongside Title VII.
Bill textSec. 1(a)(2)Amends Section 404(b) of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 to update transition-procedure headings and operative text: removes by name references to the FISA Amendments Reauthorization Act of 2017 and the Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act, substituting the current U.S. Code citation (50 U.S.C. 1881 et seq.) in their place. This is a statutory housekeeping measure that does not change substantive transition rights.
Bill textSec. 1(b)Sets the effective date of all amendments as 'the earlier of the date of the enactment of this Act or April 19, 2026,' ensuring the new expiration date takes legal effect before the prior rolling sunset could trigger — preventing any gap, even of a single day, in Section 702 surveillance authority.
Bill textSec. 1(c)The Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act (RISAA), enacted in spring 2024, set a two-year rolling sunset on FISA Title VII, meaning Section 702 authorities were scheduled to expire in spring 2026. The deadline created urgency for Congress to act.
LegisPlain analysisCongress failed to pass longer-term extensions in April 2026: proposals for a 5-year extension and an 18-month extension were both defeated when Speaker Johnson was unable to hold together a coalition, with privacy-minded Republicans demanding reform amendments before any reauthorization and their defections sinking earlier bills.
Documented evidenceIn March 2026, the FISA Court found that compliance problems the DOJ had claimed to have fixed in early 2025 were in fact ongoing, extending across multiple intelligence community agencies that were using 'filtering' tools to query Americans' information — a finding that deepened opposition to a clean extension and complicated House floor dynamics.
Documented evidenceBased on search-result journalism summary; full FISC opinion not independently fetched.The U.S. intelligence community — principally the NSA, FBI, and CIA — retains uninterrupted authority to conduct Section 702 surveillance targeting foreign persons located outside the United States and to query the resulting databases.
LegisPlain analysisRep. Mark Harris (R-NC): The executive branch avoids a gap in foreign intelligence collection that could have disrupted ongoing surveillance operations; Rep. Harris noted that FISA 'provides our intelligence agencies with critical tools to monitor foreign adversaries.'
Stakeholder claimAmericans whose private communications are incidentally swept up when they correspond with foreign-targeted persons continue to be subject to warrantless government access to those communications — a practice a federal court ruled unconstitutional in 2025 — because this law adds no warrant requirement or other protective reform.
Documented evidenceBrennan Center for Justice: The Brennan Center documented that the FBI has conducted warrantless backdoor searches of Section 702 data affecting Black Lives Matter protesters, U.S. government officials, journalists, political commentators, and 19,000 donors to a single congressional campaign — populations whose vulnerability to government surveillance is extended by this law.
Stakeholder claimSection 1(b) silently deletes the named FISA Amendments Reauthorization Act of 2017 and the Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act from the Section 404(b) transition procedures, replacing both citations with a bare U.S. Code reference. The effect is to decouple the transition provisions from their legislative history. The bill title mentions only an extension through April 30, 2026; no press summary or floor statement references this statutory cleanup.
Sources for this finding:Section 1(c) sets the effective date as the earlier of actual enactment or April 19, 2026 — the day before the approximate RISAA two-year anniversary. This dual-backstop clause is a gap-prevention device ensuring the sunset-date amendment cannot take effect after the existing repeal provision fires. It is not disclosed in the bill's title and would be invisible to anyone reading only the short title or summary.
Sources for this finding:The law contains no new compliance requirements, oversight mechanisms, reporting mandates, audit provisions, or reform conditions. It amends only the sunset date. The FISA Court (FISC) continues to exercise its existing oversight role over Section 702 operations under the same pre-existing framework.
Bill textSec. 1Despite the FISA Court's March 2026 finding of ongoing compliance violations across the intelligence community — including improper queries of Americans' data — this law adds no new enforcement or remediation measures in response to those documented failures.
LegisPlain analysisThe law contains no appropriations, budget authority, or funding provisions of any kind. It makes a single amendment to a sunset date. Intelligence community operational costs for Section 702 activities are funded through existing annual intelligence appropriations and are unaffected by this measure.
Bill textSec. 1Rep. Mark Harris (R-NC): Harris supported passage of the short-term extension, stating that FISA 'provides our intelligence agencies with critical tools to monitor foreign adversaries' and that the extension gives Congress 'the opportunity to continue working in good faith to enact reforms that protect our national security without sacrificing the constitutional rights of American citizens.'
Stakeholder claimBrennan Center for Justice: The Brennan Center opposed any clean extension, stating that existing law 'places no limits on warrantless access to Americans' communications.' The Center conditioned support for reauthorization on three reforms: a warrant requirement for U.S.-person backdoor searches, closure of the data broker loophole, and restrictions on using Section 702-acquired evidence in domestic criminal prosecutions.
Stakeholder claimBipartisan House coalition (privacy-minded Republicans and reform-demanding Democrats): A bipartisan bloc defeated earlier 5-year and 18-month reauthorization bills, with members citing Section 702's documented warrantless use against political donors, journalists, public officials, and protesters as evidence that any extension without structural safeguards is unacceptable. Democratic leaders signaled they could not support reauthorization without significant reforms.
Stakeholder claimH.R. 8322 passed the House by a vote of 261–111 and passed the Senate by unanimous consent before being signed into law.
Official recordThe measure was enacted as Public Law No. 119-84 with a text version date of April 19, 2026.
Official recordThe April 30, 2026 sunset: Congress must enact another extension or a comprehensive reauthorization before that date or Section 702 authorities will expire — an outcome that, based on the congressional dynamics preceding H.R. 8322, remained actively at risk.
LegisPlain analysisWhether any successor legislation will include a warrant requirement for backdoor searches of Section 702 data — a reform demanded by the Brennan Center, EPIC, a bipartisan House coalition, and now supported by a 2025 federal court ruling in U.S. v. Hasbajrami.
LegisPlain analysisconfidence: mediumWhether Congress will address the 'data broker loophole' — the practice of government agencies purchasing Americans' sensitive personal data from commercial data brokers to avoid the warrant requirements that govern direct government collection — a reform that a coalition of over 130 organizations urged as a condition of any reauthorization.
LegisPlain analysisconfidence: mediumWhether the FISA Court's March 2026 compliance findings will generate formal remediation requirements or public reporting as part of a longer-term reauthorization, or whether the intelligence community's compliance track record will continue without new corrective mechanisms.
LegisPlain analysisconfidence: developingDepends entirely on the outcome of post-April 30 reauthorization negotiations.This decode is a snapshot. Bills change. Get emailed when this one is amended, voted on, or signed.
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