A new Senate bill would stop federal agencies from punishing insurers that cover state-legal cannabis businesses.
Introduced on July 21, 2026, S. 5049 carries a tidy nickname: the "Clarifying Law Around Insurance of Marijuana Act," or the "CLAIM Act." Its sponsors, Sen. Kevin Cramer and Sen. Ruben Gallego, sent it to the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs after it was read twice.
The problem it targets is familiar. Cannabis is legal in many states but still illegal federally, and that gap leaves insurers uneasy. Write a policy for a licensed dispensary or grower, and a federal regulator could, in theory, come knocking. The CLAIM Act aims to remove that risk.
At its center sits a "safe harbor." A federal agency "may not" prohibit, penalize, or otherwise discourage an insurer from covering a "cannabis-related legitimate business" - defined as a manufacturer, producer, or company that handles cannabis under state law, from cultivating and producing to selling, transporting, and dispensing.
The shield goes deeper. A regulator could not cancel or limit an insurer's policies over its cannabis work. It could not press an insurer to drop a policyholder just for being a cannabis owner, operator, or employee, even if the insurer never knew about the link. And it could not take "adverse or corrective supervisory action" against a landlord who leases space to a cannabis business.
There is a liability piece, too. An insurer and its officers, directors, and employees "may not be held liable pursuant to any Federal law or regulation" solely for insuring a cannabis business, or for reinvesting the income.
The bill has guardrails. It would not force any insurer to write cannabis coverage. And it would leave the 1945 McCarran-Ferguson Act, which hands insurance regulation largely to the states, and the Dodd-Frank Act untouched.
It also calls for a study. The Comptroller General would examine the barriers - licensing included - that minority-owned and women-owned cannabis businesses face in reaching financial services, then report to Congress.
For now, this is only a proposal. S. 5049 sits in committee, and it would need to pass both chambers and win the president's signature before anything changes.
