Safe Sport Authorization Act
American law

The Protecting Young Victims from Sexual Abuse and Safe Sport Authorization Act of 2017, also known as the Safe Sport Authorization Act, is an American law that establishes protection for young athletes. Among its provisions, it established the United States Center for SafeSport as an independent entity to investigate reports of abuse and to protect athletes from abuse in the United States Olympic movement.
History
The Safe Sport Authorization Act requires Olympic governing bodies and amateur sports organizations to report sex abuse allegations immediately to local or federal law enforcement, or a child welfare agency designated by the US Justice Department. It further gives the United States Center for SafeSport the responsibility of ensuring that aspiring U.S. Olympic athletes can report allegations of abuse to it as an independent and non-conflicted entity for investigation and resolution, and to make sure that all national governing bodies follow the strictest standards for child abuse prevention and detection.
The bill amended the Ted Stevens Olympic and Amateur Sports Act, under the Commerce Committee's jurisdiction, to expand the purposes of United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee to promote a safe environment in sports that is free from abuse.
The Protecting Young Victims from Sexual Abuse and Safe Sport Authorization Act of 2017 combined separate bills introduced in the 115th Congress by Senators Dianne Feinstein (D–CA) and John Thune (R–SD) in response to the USA Gymnastics sex abuse scandal, allegations made against personnel involved with USA Swimming and USA Taekwondo, and following Senate hearings by the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Senate Commerce Committee on issues of athlete safety. Senator Feinstein introduced S. 534, the Protecting Young Victims from Sexual Abuse Act on March 6, 2017. Senator Thune introduced S. 1426, the United States Center for Safe Sport Authorization Act, on June 29, 2017. Following negotiations, the two bills were merged and ultimately signed into law by President Donald Trump on February 14, 2018.
SafeSport
As a direct result, the United States Center for SafeSport was established in 2017 under the auspices of the Protecting Young Victims from Sexual Abuse and Safe Sport Authorization of 2017.
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The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as american law. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q60752104. VIAF identifies the subject as 6811153532477248820002. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2017, 1426 and 2018.
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This entry incorporates text from “Safe Sport Authorization Act” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.