It’s a start.
It took the #MeToo movement, an explosion of resignations, and Brett Kavanaugh’s gut-wrenching confirmation hearing to reform sexual harassment policy in Congress.
The House and Senate — which had previously been at odds on how exactly to address the issue of harassment in the government body — overwhelmingly approved legislation last week after roughly a year of back-and-forth on the matter. President Donald Trump, who has been accused of sexual assault himself, is now expected to sign it.
The legislation reforms the Congressional Accountability Act of 1995 by significantly improving the process for congressional employees to report allegations of sexual harassment, holding lawmakers financially liable for harassment settlements and increasing transparency around any settlements that lawmakers pay out for possible allegations.
It had picked up significant momentum earlier this year, but its fate was more recently in doubt after it had stalled for months. The bill’s passage comes about a year after Congress was hit with a raft of sexual misconduct allegations that resulted in the resignation of multiple members, both Democrats and Republicans, including Reps. Blake Farenthold, John Conyers, and Trent Franks and Sen. Al Franken. And it marks an important step toward Congress acknowledging its problems with harassment and the power imbalance that exists between staffers and lawmakers.
But it’s really just the beginning, advocates and lawmakers note.
“The agreement reflects the first set of comprehensive reforms that have been made to the Congressional Accountability Act since 1995,” House leaders including chief bill sponsor Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA), who has made this one of her core issues, said in a statement. “We believe this is a strong step towards creating a new standard in Congress that will set a positive example in our nation, but there is still more work to be done.”
While the bill makes important inroads on a number of Congress’s longstanding issues with harassment, it still has much further to go.
The final version of the legislation is a byproduct of months of negotiations between the House and the Senate, which strongly disagreed on how to handle a series of provisions that would further bolster protections for victims. While the House was eventually able to secure some compromises, the ultimate legislation watered down key tenets including a guarantee of employer-backed legal counsel for all victims.
Here are the major provisions of the final bill, dubbed the Congressional Accountability Act of 1995 Reform Act, as passed by both chambers:
Even though these provisions didn’t cover everything that advocates pushed for, they do offer a major update to a law that was originally designed not so much to help victims but to protect harassers.
