New Act Exempts Passenger Ships from Key Jones Act and Safety Rules: Crew Citizenship and Domestic Requirements Lifted

The aptly named Open America's Ports Act is making some serious waves in maritime law, specifically targeting the rules that govern passenger vessels—think cruise ships and ferries—operating between U.S. ports. If you’ve ever wondered why certain cruises have to stop in a foreign port, this bill explains why, and it aims to change that by carving out major exceptions to long-standing U.S. shipping laws.

The core of this legislation is twofold: it completely repeals certain domestic operating requirements under the Passenger Vessel Safety Act (PVSA), and it creates a massive loophole in the Jones Act (specifically Chapter 121) for passenger ships. Essentially, any vessel carrying people between U.S. ports—even if it hits a foreign port on the way—would no longer have to follow specific operational rules (like those in Section 12103 and 12112) that apply to other ships. This is a big deal for cruise lines looking to streamline their routes and cut costs.

The PVSA Safety Rules: Gone With the Tide

Section 2 of the Act explicitly wipes out Section 55103 of Title 46 of the U.S. Code. That section contained domestic requirements under the PVSA. For everyday people, these domestic requirements were part of the system designed to ensure passenger vessels operating in U.S. waters met certain safety and operational thresholds. While the bill includes a "Rule of Construction" (Section 3) to prevent accidentally wiping out other existing laws, the direct repeal of these specific PVSA domestic rules is a significant reduction in regulatory oversight. If you’re a passenger, the question becomes: what specific safety standards are we losing, and are they adequately covered elsewhere?

Exempting Passenger Ships from the Jones Act

This bill doesn't repeal the Jones Act entirely, but it creates a powerful exception. The Jones Act generally requires vessels operating between U.S. ports to be U.S.-built, U.S.-owned, and U.S.-crewed. The Open America's Ports Act focuses on the crewing and operational side for passenger ships, exempting them from key requirements. This means passenger vessels moving between, say, Miami and San Juan, or Seattle and Anchorage, would no longer be bound by certain rules governing who can operate them.

Who’s Steering the Ship? Citizenship Rules Lifted

One of the most consequential changes is the adjustment to Section 8103(k) of Title 46. This change removes the requirement that crews on these passenger vessels meet U.S. citizenship and Navy Reserve requirements. Currently, U.S. maritime labor relies on these rules to ensure jobs go to U.S. citizens and to maintain a pool of trained mariners who can be called upon in a national emergency. Under this new Act, cruise lines would be free to staff these routes with non-U.S. crews, potentially impacting job opportunities for thousands of U.S. maritime workers and weakening the pool of trained personnel available to the Navy. For a U.S. mariner, this provision represents a direct threat to their livelihood, opening up their jobs to lower-cost foreign labor.

The Real-World Port Call Loophole

Why does the bill keep mentioning ships that stop at a foreign port? Because that’s often how cruise lines currently skirt the Jones Act—by making a quick stop in Mexico or the Caribbean, they legally become part of international trade and avoid some domestic requirements. This bill essentially says, even if you’re doing the coastwise trip (U.S. port to U.S. port), we’re giving you the same regulatory break you’d get if you stopped overseas. This grants massive operational flexibility to cruise operators, allowing them to schedule more direct, profitable routes without the burden of U.S. crew and operational rules. However, it also formalizes a regulatory exception that could allow foreign-flagged, foreign-crewed vessels to dominate domestic passenger routes, impacting U.S. maritime labor and potentially shifting oversight from U.S. regulators to the flag state of the vessel.