A Congressional Stock-Ban Advocate Violated the STOCK Act

Democratic Rep. Linda Sánchez wants to ban members of Congress from buying and selling individual stocks. She co-sponsored legislation in 2025 aimed at doing just that amid ongoing concerns that lawmakers’ personal finances often conflict with their public duties.

But the California congresswoman this week became the latest federal lawmaker to violate the existing Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act by failing to report a stock trade within the law’s 45-day disclosure window, according to a NOTUS review of a U.S. House financial document.

The late trade involves up to $15,000 worth of stock in communications technology company Cisco Systems Inc., which holds numerous federal government contracts.

In a statement, Sánchez spokesperson Adam Russell acknowledged the late disclosure and explained that “the stock was owned by her teenage son and was gifted to him by a family friend at his baptism when he was an infant. When the congresswoman realized that the transaction had mistakenly not been disclosed within the required 45-day window, she immediately contacted the [House] Ethics Committee to report the sale and filed an amended disclosure.”

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Russell, who affirmed that the congresswoman “believes that members of Congress should not trade individual stocks,” added that the Ethics Committee, which did not respond to a request for comment, did not require Sánchez to pay a standard $200 late filing fine because the late disclosure fell within a monthlong post-deadline “grace period” when such fines are waived.

Sánchez’s personal financial disclosures filed with the U.S. House indicate she owns no other individual stocks.

Sánchez joins dozens of other federal lawmakers who’ve violated the STOCK Act’s disclosure provisions this decade, including several in the past few months. Other House representatives, such as Democratic Rep. Cleo Fields and Republican Rep. Byron Donalds, have made recent trades that former members of their own party have criticized as potentially problematic.

Her late disclosure, made Friday, also comes as the House Administration Committee is slated on Wednesday to consider a new congressional stock-ban bill known as the Stop Insider Trading Act, which Republican leadership supports.

The bill would ban federal lawmakers, their spouses and dependent children from purchasing stock in publicly traded companies and require them to file a public notice at least a week ahead of selling any existing stock holdings. Violators would be subject to a fine of “$2,000 or 10 percent of the value of the transaction in the covered investment … whichever is greater” and forfeit any net gains.

But critics of this new legislation — the latest in a series of competing congressional stock-ban bills, including the bipartisan Restore Trust in Congress Act — argue the GOP-backed bill would still allow lawmakers to make legislative decisions that affect their existing stock holdings, such as members of Armed Services committees who own defense contractor stocks.

The bill would also only apply to members of Congress and not the president or other members of the executive branch, which some Democrats insist should be part of any new law. And as currently written, the bill wouldn’t apply to cryptocurrency trades, which would be banned under other stock-ban bill proposals.

Even if the GOP leadership-backed House bill passes the full House, it could face dim prospects in the Senate, which in July passed its own version of a stock-ban bill out of committee. That bill has yet to receive a vote before the full Senate.