New Federal Law Creates Cancer Presumption for First Responders: Retroactive Claims Date Back to 2020

The Honoring Our Fallen Heroes Act of 2025 is a major win for public safety officers—think police, firefighters, and EMTs—who develop cancer after years on the job. The core of this bill is simple: it creates a legal shortcut for officers seeking federal benefits for cancer. Specifically, if a public safety officer is exposed to a known cancer-causing agent (a carcinogen) while on duty and later develops one of several listed cancers, the law now presumes the exposure caused the cancer, making it much easier to qualify for death or disability benefits.

The Legal Shortcut: Presuming Occupational Cancer

Before this bill, officers often had to spend years and thousands of dollars proving that their cancer was directly caused by their work environment—a tough fight when dealing with complex medical science. This Act flips the script. It uses lists created by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) to define carcinogens (Group 1 or 2A) and then lists specific “exposure-related cancers,” including common ones like bladder, lung, prostate, and breast cancer. If an officer served at least five years and is diagnosed within 15 years of leaving service, the presumption kicks in.

This is huge for someone like a firefighter who spent two decades fighting structure fires and is now diagnosed with lung cancer. Instead of having to hire experts to link every fire scene exposure to his diagnosis, the law assumes the connection. While the government can still challenge this presumption, they need “solid medical evidence” to prove the exposure wasn’t a substantial factor, setting a high bar for denial.

Keeping the List Current: A Mandate for Review

Policy should keep up with science, and this bill tries to ensure that. The Director of the Bureau is required to review and update the list of covered cancers at least every three years, using studies from groups like the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). Even better, any citizen or organization can petition the Director to add a new cancer to the list, provided they submit evidence showing a significant occupational risk for officers. This built-in review process means the law won't become outdated as new scientific links between job duties and cancer are established.

Retroactive Relief and Extended Deadlines

One of the most impactful parts of this Act is the time frame. This new cancer presumption applies retroactively to claims for deaths or disabilities filed on or after January 1, 2020. This means officers who filed claims and were previously denied, or those who held off filing because the burden of proof was too high, can now revisit their cases. For those relying on this new provision, the Act grants an extended three-year window from the date it becomes law to file their claim, overriding standard filing deadlines. This ensures no one misses out just because the law changed.

Broader Definitions and Administrative Adjustments

Beyond cancer, the bill makes two important technical adjustments. First, it broadens the definition of “line of duty action” to include any action an officer was directed, required, or allowed to perform as part of their job, which expands what qualifies for benefits generally. Second, it quietly broadens confidentiality protections for data shared with the Office of Justice Programs, especially information that identifies individuals. Interestingly, this confidentiality change is applied retroactively all the way back to 1979, which might create some administrative wrinkles for agencies dealing with very old data and pending cases.