The civic record
Read. Follow. Verify.North Carolina House Bill 861 establishes competitive grants, performance standards, and reporting requirements for pregnancy centers
Last action · April 10, 2025: Ref To Com On Rules, Calendar, and Operations of the House (House action)Sponsors: Maria Cervania and 13 others
Track this bill to get notified when it advances a stage. One tap to stop, anytime.
What This Bill Would Do
The General Assembly of North Carolina requires the Carolina Pregnancy Care Fellowship to establish a competitive grant process, performance standards, and detailed reporting requirements for state-funded pregnancy centers beginning July 1, 2025.
State-funded pregnancy centers must comply with new operational transparency rules, detailed client demographic reporting, and administrative spending caps, or face the recovery of disbursed state funds.
Who It Would Affect
Groups the bill's text would affect if enacted, as described in the record. Being affected is not a position for or against it.
Carolina Pregnancy Care Fellowship
Must administer a competitive grant process, cap administrative spending, ensure funds are used for nonsectarian purposes, and submit annual reports to the state.
Pregnancy centers
Must apply through a competitive process, meet new performance standards, submit detailed demographic and financial reports, and risk recovery of funds if noncompliant.
Department of Health and Human Services
Must adopt rules establishing performance standards, monitor compliance, receive annual reports, and recover disbursed funds for noncompliance.
Key Facts
- The Carolina Pregnancy Care Fellowship must establish a competitive grant process for awarding state-appropriated funds to pregnancy centers.
- The Carolina Pregnancy Care Fellowship is capped at using no more than 10 percent of allocated funds for administrative purposes for the 2023-2025 fiscal biennium, and no more than 15 percent for subsequent fiscal years.
- State-allocated funds for the Carolina Pregnancy Care Fellowship must be used exclusively for nonsectarian and nonreligious purposes.
- Beginning July 1, 2026, the Carolina Pregnancy Care Fellowship must annually report grant recipients, funding amounts, and client service metrics to the Department of Health and Human Services and legislative oversight committees.
Show all 9 facts
- Beginning July 1, 2026, grant-awarded pregnancy centers must submit detailed annual reports including client counts by county, age category, race and ethnicity, income range, and specific services provided.
- The Department of Health and Human Services must adopt rules establishing performance standards and monitoring mechanisms for pregnancy centers operating in North Carolina.
- The Department of Health and Human Services is authorized to take administrative action to recover state grant funds or appropriations disbursed to any pregnancy center found out of compliance with performance standards.
- Pregnancy centers must report five-year historical information including itemized annual expenditures for staff, supplies, marketing, travel, medical equipment, and rent.
- This act becomes effective on July 1, 2025.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Carolina Pregnancy Care Fellowship required to establish under this bill?
What percentage of funds can be used for administrative purposes?
What information must pregnancy centers report annually beginning in 2026?
What else do you want to know?
News Coverage
Follow the record
Votes, people, money & the original sourceWhere This Stands
Currently in committee. The next step in the legislative lifecycle is Floor Vote.
Procedural history
3 actions- Apr 10, 2025HouseRef To Com On Rules, Calendar, and Operations of the House
- Apr 10, 2025HousePassed 1st Reading
- Apr 9, 2025HouseIntroducedFiled
Version history
Only one version on file - nothing to compare yet. As later stages (committee substitute, engrossed, enrolled) are captured, the redline appears here.
View official text →Lobbying Activity
No state lobbying filings in our records match this bill. Federal lobbying reports (LDA) cover Congress, so they are not listed on state bills.
Full breakdown
Who this bill affects and the strongest case for and against it, written only from the bill’s own text.
Sponsors
Show 9 more sponsors
Discoveries
Patterns POLISCOPE noticed across the record. These are observations to investigate, not conclusions.
Introduction of Competitive Granting and Oversight for Pregnancy Centers
The bill shifts state funding for pregnancy centers from direct allocations to a structured competitive grant process overseen by the Carolina Pregnancy Care Fellowship and the Department of Health and Human Services.
Connected Entities
Sources
www.ncleg.gov
Analysis Score
0–100- Significance75How much this matters to a regular citizen
- Controversy80Intensity of disagreement among stakeholders
- Entertainment10Compellingness for a non-policy-wonk reader
- Buzz50Current news / social attention level
Publisher tools