#MeToo changed culture but few laws
Lawmakers stall on sexual harassment fight
Although the #MeToo movement sparked a cultural reckoning on sexual harassment and assault, few new laws substantially remove the barriers for victims to report and seek justice or increase accountability for perpetrators, a USA TODAY analysis reveals.
Congress has passed no laws related to sexual harassment in the workplace since #MeToo, not even regarding its own handling of harassment and discrimination claims against senators and representatives. This lags the standard set by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for private companies across the country.
States passed a number of laws, but the majority are limited in scope. Others, such as a pair of California bills aimed at making it easier to take sexual harassment complaints to court, were vetoed.
“Everybody thinks some massive, massive change in laws has happened with the #MeToo movement. But it hasn’t,” says Carol Moody, president of women’s advocacy group Legal Momentum. “Nobody will disagree something needs to be done, but the devil’s in the details.”
USA TODAY examined more than
2,000 bills passed in the past 24 months by Congress and by legislatures in all 50 states that contained the word “sexual” and terms such as “me too,” “rape kits” and “nondisclosure” using the legislative tracking service LegiScan. Since #MeToo began, elected officials passed
261 laws that directly addressed topics championed by the movement, just a slight uptick from 238 the year before.
Congress considered two omnibus bills this year, one on sexual harassment and another on sexual violence: the EMPOWER Act, which covers nondisclosure agreements and required filings of settlements with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Violence Against Women Act.
“I think that they just don’t think that this is important. I just think it’s not about them,” said Toni Van Pelt, president of the National Organization for Women. “It’s not on their agenda.”
What have lawmakers done?
Though efforts in Congress hit roadblocks, statehouses made incremental progress. Several laws are narrowly focused, including 8 percent that created or renewed days or months designated for public awareness. Another 8 percent involved training programs for government employees, contractors and lobbyists.
This year, Maryland, Illinois, Louisiana, New Hampshire and Delaware joined 15 other states in making it illegal for law enforcement to have sex with people in their charge.
“I think that it is a ripe climate for low-hanging fruit to get passed,” such as making it mandatory to test rape kits, said Kristen Houser of the National Sexual Violence Resource Center. “No one is going to argue with it. But that’s really different than passing a law mandating that elected state legislators and their staff have to behave appropriately or there will be repercussions in the statehouse. ... I am waiting to see significant changes. I’m waiting to see things pass that seem like they would be common sense if this issue were a priority.”
States passed at least 35 bills related to sexual assault survivors’ rights this year. Those range from setting deadlines to test backlogged rape kits to restricting a victim’s gender or sexual orientation from being used as a defense and entered into evidence in court.
Amanda Nguyen was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for her work with victims’ rights. The 27-year-old wrote the Survivors’ Bill of Rights Act in 2014 after she said she struggled to preserve her own rape kit.
The bill, which includes access to medical forensic exams, sexual assault advocates and protective orders, was signed into law in 2016 after unanimously passing Congress. It’s passed in 18 states, seven after #MeToo.
“I am waiting to see significant changes. I’m waiting to see things pass that seem like they would be common sense if this issue were a priority.” Kristen Houser National Sexual Violence Resource Center
Statutes of limitations
Testimonies by survivors of abuse in the Catholic Church and hundreds of gymnasts who came forward against former USA Gymnastics coach Larry Nassar sparked heated debate around statutes of limitations.
“Where I don’t understand the statute of limitations is child sex crimes,” said Sunny Hostin, a former federal prosecutor specializing in child sex crimes and co-host of “The View.” “If you have someone who was sexually abused when he or she was 5 years old ... who was living under an abuser’s roof, that child is going to be unable to go forward.”
After Nassar’s trial, Congress passed legislation extending the statute of limitations for victims to sue alleged perpetrators to age 28 or up to 10 years after the reasonable discovery of the violation.
States followed suit: Michigan extended its cutoff from the victim’s 19th birthday to 28th and provided a 90-day window for all Nassar victims to sue retroactively. A version extending the same window to all victims of sexual abuse failed to pass the state House. Representatives of the Catholic Church and state universities publicly expressed concern over the number of lawsuits that could come from opening the window to all survivors.
“You have the Catholic Church lobbying heavily with state legislatures. You see athletic departments lobbying their state legislature, and they’re like a finely tuned machine at this point. They’ve been doing it years and years and years, really to save money from civil lawsuits, and it’s shameful,” Hostin said.
On Capitol Hill
Congressional policies lag some states and the private sector, which led Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Calif., to propose mandatory sexual harassment training in 2014. “It was rebuffed by the chair of the committee who wouldn’t even take it up as an amendment in the committee, let alone on the floor,” Speier said.
When #MeToo came three years later, she saw an opportunity.
“I videotaped a short message about my own experience (of sexual harassment in Congress), mostly so that women on the Hill would feel safe coming to me to talk about it. Then I heard from many women, sitting in my office crying, shaking, and I knew that the problem was even bigger than I thought.”
The House Administration Committee revealed that taxpayer money was used to settle more than $342,000 in harassment and discrimination complaints involving House members from 2008 to 2012.
Speier, Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., and several of their House counterparts, including Rep. Bradley Byrne, R-Ala., worked to amend the 1995 Congressional Accountability Act to strengthen victims’ rights, require third-party investigations and hold members personally financially liable for settlements. It easily passed the House in February but hit a snag in the Senate. Provisions for third-party investigations were stripped, as were aspects of those holding members financially liable.
Negotiations stalled, and there’s been no movement in five months.
“I think the average person in America has the right to expect more from us,” Byrne said.