Sexual harassment cases flood state legislatures
100 people in 20 states accuse 40 politicians
When Kirsten Anderson submitted a memo detailing her concerns about sexual harassment at the Iowa Capitol, she expected comments about women in the office — their sex lives, breast sizes and the length of skirts worn by teenage pages — to stop.
Instead, Anderson was fired seven hours later from her job with the Iowa Republican Senate Caucus.
After four years of litigation that ended in September, the state agreed to pay $1.75 million to settle her claim, leaving taxpayers footing the bill. Her case is among the first in a recent wave of highprofile sexual harassment cases that have roiled legislatures around the nation, highlighting the moral and financial liability states face as claims pile up.
Since last year, at least 40 lawmakers — nearly all men — in 20 states have been publicly accused by more than 100 people of some form of sexual misconduct or harassment, a USA TODAY NET-
WORK analysis found.
The total, which doesn’t include confidential or anonymous complaints or government staffers who have been accused of sexual misdeeds, reflects unprecedented levels of scrutiny on statehouses.
As allegations and swift actions are taken against high-profile men, including Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, and others accused of sexual harassment, there have been varying degrees of punishment for lawmakers.
Two weeks ago, Kentucky House Speaker Jeff Hoover, a Republican, resigned from his leadership position amid growing pressure over a report that he settled a sexual harassment complaint made by a staff member.
This month, Florida’s Senate president, Republican Joe Negron, ordered an investigation into allegations that Sen. Jack Latvala, a Republican running for governor, touched or made inappropriate comments about six women. Latvala denied the claims.
This year, Republican Rep. Mark Lovell, a freshman Tennessee lawmaker, resigned amid allegations of sexual harassment. The resignation followed last year’s expulsion of Jeremy Durham, a Republican representative who had inappropriate sexual contact with at least 22 women, according to an attorney general’s investigation.
The ways lawmakers have handled sexual harassment and assault allegations have left some experts looking for change. “The consequence must fit the transgression,” said Jennifer Dro- bac, an Indiana University law professor and expert on sexual harassment cases. “You have to withdraw the privileges, kick them out of Congress or out of the statehouse.”
This year, Democrats and Republicans face accusations of misdeeds at nearly two dozen state capitols: Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire, Nevada, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Tennessee, Vermont and Washington.
States that haven’t seen allegations of sexual harassment by lawmakers have taken action. Several, including Wisconsin, North Dakota, Arkansas and Alaska, are working to change their sexual harassment policies.
Laura Palumbo, communication director for the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, said the sudden national discussion has given victims and others a new sense of security.
“I think that the level of attention that is currently on the issue of sexual harassment really does point us to a watershed moment where more victims are feeling comfortable coming forward with reports,” she said.
Chris Mooney, director of the Institute of Government and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois-Springfield, said he would “bet the farm” sexual harassment happens in most statehouses.
“This is a structural situation that’s the same in each state where you’ve got a lot of independent power controlled by men arbitrarily, and they’ve got stuff they can give, and some of them are willing to use it,” Mooney said.
Women make up less than a quarter of all state lawmakers, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
In legislatures, where staffers, lawmakers and lobbyists intermingle inside and outside statehouses, reporting harassment is complicated by the fact that it is often unclear to whom victims should turn.
But, experts said, the traditional hurdles of speaking out about sexual harassment have begun to topple, in part because of fallout from scandals surrounding Weinstein and other prominent men accused of misconduct. Still, much needs to be done to address the issue, they said.
“When we see lawmakers grabbing and groping people or paying people off in secret to keep quiet about abuse, that is not indicative of an evolved society,” said Indiana University’s Drobac. “We need to move beyond this Wild West ‘I’m going to indulge all my passions’ society and start living to a higher level.”