Washington ? The House on Wednesday unanimously approved Kansas Rep. Nancy Boyda’s bill to close a loophole that allowed a Kansas City, Kan., man convicted of possessing child pornography to escape punishment.

Boyda’s measure targets a court decision earlier this year that threw out the 2005 conviction of William Schaefer.

Schaefer was found to have illegal images of children on his computer that he obtained over the Internet. But the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in September that an Internet transmission is not “interstate commerce” as required by the federal child pornography laws.

Boyda’s bill closes that loophole to specify that Internet transmissions do, in fact, travel across state lines.

“It shouldn’t have been this hard to start off with,” Boyda said. “But Congress every now and then can get it right and move quickly.”

The Senate is expected to consider a similar measure later this year.

If the legislation ultimately is signed into law, it would apply only to future cases and would not be retroactive to Schaefer’s case.

The 10th Circuit’s ruling in Schaefer’s case contradicted a previous decision by the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in a different case. Such splits often are resolved by the U.S. Supreme Court, but Boyda said she did not want to wait months or years for that outcome.

“We need to get these guys in jail and keep them there,” Boyda said. “It’s about keeping our kids safe from these predators.”

She said the appeals court in its ruling essentially asked Congress to clarify the law if it intended Internet transactions to be considered interstate commerce.

Boyda’s legislation was one of several measures the House passed on Wednesday to toughen laws on child pornography and sex predators.

Another bill would approve spending $1 billion to combat online child exploitation, create a Justice Department office to coordinate prosecution efforts and provide more money to hire agents and improve forensic lab capabilities dedicated to child exploitation cases.

The Department of Justice estimates that one in five children between the ages of 10 and 17 received a sexual solicitation or approach last year while using the Internet.