This Act prohibits the use of autopens and invalidates documents signed by unauthorized individuals for engrossed bills, Executive orders, and pardons.
Addison McDowell
Representative
NC-6
The Ban on Inkless Directives and Executive Notarizations Act of 2025 mandates that the President must personally sign engrossed bills, Executive Orders, and pardons, explicitly banning the use of automatic signing devices for these actions. Furthermore, this Act invalidates any prior official document signed by an unauthorized individual, even if the signing occurred before the law's enactment. This legislation ensures that the highest level of presidential authority is conveyed through the President's own physical signature.
New Bill Bans Autopens for President, Threatens to Nullify Past Pardons and EOs
The Ban on Inkless Directives and Executive Notarizations Act of 2025 is short, punchy, and potentially chaotic. The core idea is simple: it requires the President to personally sign three specific, high-stakes documents—any engrossed bill passed by Congress, any Executive Order, and any pardon or commutation of sentence. It explicitly bans the use of any automatic signing device, like an autopen, for these actions.
The End of the Autopen Era
Section 2 of this bill, titled “No delegation or use of autopen,” cuts off a long-standing practice in the Executive Branch. For generations, Presidents have often relied on staff or automated devices to sign routine documents, and sometimes even important ones, to manage the sheer volume of paperwork. This bill ends that convenience for the three biggest categories of presidential action. The goal is clear: increase accountability by ensuring that these major decisions carry the President’s actual, physical signature. This means less chance of a staffer accidentally or intentionally pushing through something the President hasn't personally reviewed and signed. For the average person, this is about making sure the laws and directives that affect their job, taxes, or environment are truly endorsed by the person elected to the office.
The Retroactive Legal Earthquake
While Section 2 is an interesting administrative change, Section 3 is where the real drama—and potential legal chaos—lies. This section declares that if any of those three document types (bills, EOs, or pardons) were signed in the past by someone not authorized under a specific federal statute (3 U.S.C. § 301), that document is now completely invalid, effective immediately. It doesn't matter if the document was signed five weeks ago or fifty years ago. If the signing violated the rules on delegation, it’s legally zeroed out.
This is a massive deal because it creates significant legal instability. Think about an Executive Order signed years ago that established a national monument, or changed how a federal agency handles workplace safety inspections, or granted a pardon to someone. If that document was signed using an autopen, or if a busy Vice President or Chief of Staff signed it during an emergency, the validity of that action could be challenged instantly. People who relied on those pardons, businesses that followed those regulations, or land use decisions based on those EOs could suddenly find the rug pulled out from under them. The bill essentially weaponizes a strict interpretation of signing authority to retroactively erase past presidential actions, creating an enormous headache for the courts and anyone whose life was touched by those documents. It’s a clean-up job that could turn into a legal explosion.