CLARITY Act Faces Crucial Senate Vote in September

The CLARITY Act has been making its way through Congress for over a year, and despite bipartisan support in the House, it still faces significant challenges in the Senate. Introduced on May 29, 2025, by House Financial Services Committee Chairman French Hill as H.R. 3633, the bill aims to create clearer federal boundaries between the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).

The legislation passed in the House with a substantial bipartisan majority on July 17, 2025, receiving 294 votes to 134. However, its journey through the Senate has been marked by delays, divisions, and missed deadlines.

One of the key obstacles is the division of oversight between the Senate Banking and Agriculture committees. While the Banking committee focused primarily on SEC-related provisions, the Agriculture Committee concentrated on commodities oversight and the CFTC. This separation led to two parallel legislative tracks that ultimately had to be reconciled before lawmakers could move toward a unified market-structure framework.

In January 2026, Senate Banking Chairman Tim Scott postponed a markup of digital asset market structure legislation, citing ongoing bipartisan negotiations and unresolved differences within the committee. Despite this setback, the Senate Agriculture Committee continued advancing the commodities side of the broader regulatory framework.