116 HR 6623 IH: COVID–19 Language Access Act U.S. House of Representatives 2020-04-24 text/xml EN Pursuant to Title 17 Section 105 of the United States Code, this file is not subject to copyright protection and is in the public domain.

I

116th CONGRESS2d Session

H. R. 6623

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

April 24, 2020

Ms. Meng (for herself, Mrs. Watson Coleman, Mr. Price of North Carolina, Ms. Garcia of Texas, Ms. Schakowsky, Mr. Gonzalez of Texas, Mrs. Hayes, Mr. Rush, Mr. García of Illinois, Mr. Meeks, Ms. Johnson of Texas, Mr. Huffman, Ms. Norton, Mr. Espaillat, Ms. Castor of Florida, Ms. Shalala, Mr. Carson of Indiana, Mr. Kilmer, Mr. Serrano, Ms. Jayapal, Ms. Pressley, Mr. Danny K. Davis of Illinois, Ms. Velázquez, Mr. Cárdenas, Mr. Grijalva, Mr. McNerney, Mr. Hastings, Mr. Johnson of Georgia, Mr. Gomez, Mr. Takano, Ms. Lee of California, Mr. Horsford, Ms. Porter, Mr. Case, and Ms. Eshoo) introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on Oversight and Reform

A BILL

To require all Federal agencies to translate COVID–19 materials into multiple languages, and for other purposes.

1.

Short title

This Act may be cited as the

COVID–19 Language Access Act

.

2.

Translation of materials

(a)

In general

Each Federal agency that receives Federal assistance related to the COVID–19 pandemic shall translate any English language written material prepared for the general public relating to such pandemic into the languages described in subsection (b) not later than 7 days after any such material is made available in English.(b)

Languages covered

The material described in subsection (a) shall be translated, at a minimum, into Spanish, Arabic, Cambodian, Chinese, Haitian Creole, French, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Laotian, Russian, Tagalog, Urdu, Vietnamese, Greek, Polish, Thai, and Portuguese.(c)

Definition of COVID–19 pandemic

In this section, the term COVID–19 pandemic means the public health emergency declared by the Secretary pursuant to section 319 of the Public Health Service Act on January 31, 2020, entitled Determination that a Public Health Emergency Exists Nationwide as the Result of the 2019 Novel Coronavirus.