34 U.S.C. § 20990 — National registry of substantiated cases of child abuse

(a) In general: The Secretary of Health and Human Services, working with the Attorney General, must create a national registry of substantiated child abuse or neglect cases.

(b) Information: (1) Collection: States and Indian tribes must provide the registry's information to the Secretary. A State may instead choose to have its political subdivisions provide it. (2) Type of information: The registry must keep, in a central electronic registry, information about people reported to a State, Indian tribe, or political subdivision of a State as perpetrators of a substantiated case of child abuse or neglect.

(c) Scope of information: (1) In general: (A) Treatment of reports: The information provided to the Secretary must concern substantiated reports of child abuse or neglect. (B) Exception: If a State, Indian tribe, or political subdivision of a State keeps an equivalent electronic register of child abuse or neglect cases under a requirement or authorization in another law, the information provided to the Secretary must cover the same information as that register. (2) Form: Information provided to the Secretary must (A) use a standardized electronic form the Secretary determines, and (B) contain case-specific identifying information limited to the perpetrator's name and the nature of the substantiated case of child abuse or neglect, and must comply with clauses (viii) and (ix) of 42 U.S.C. § 5106a(b)(2)(A).

(d) Construction: This section does not require a State, Indian tribe, or political subdivision of a State to modify (1) an equivalent register of child abuse or neglect cases that it keeps under another law, or (2) any other record relating to child abuse or neglect, whether the report of abuse or neglect was substantiated, unsubstantiated, or determined to be unfounded.

(e) Accessibility: Information in the national registry may be accessed only by a Federal, State, Indian tribe, or local government entity, or an agent of such an entity, that needs the information to carry out its legal responsibilities to protect children from child abuse and neglect.

(f) Dissemination: The Secretary must establish standards for disseminating information in the national registry of substantiated child abuse or neglect cases. The standards must comply with clauses (viii) and (ix) of 42 U.S.C. § 5106a(b)(2)(A).

(g) Study: (1) In general: The Secretary must study whether it is practical to establish data-collection standards for a national child abuse and neglect registry, with recommendations and findings about (A) the costs and benefits of those standards, (B) the data-collection standards currently used by each State, Indian tribe, or political subdivision of a State, (C) data-collection standards that should be considered for a model of promising practices, and (D) a due-process procedure for a national registry. (2) Report: Within one year after July 27, 2006, the Secretary of Homeland Security must submit a report containing the study's recommendations and findings on data-collection standards for a national child abuse registry to the Committees on the Judiciary of the House of Representatives and the United States Senate, the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, and the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. (3) Authorization of appropriations: $500,000 is authorized to be appropriated for fiscal years 2006 and 2007 to carry out the study required by this subsection.