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The Violence Against Women Act of 1994. A significant achievement by the Democrats and Joe Biden [1]
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Date: 2022-09-09
Next week we will celebrate the 28th anniversary of the enactment of the Violence Against Women Act. The new law was another outstanding achievement of the Democrats and Joe Biden, and they should remind American voters of this accomplishment as we approach the midterm elections.
In the Senate, as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Biden took the lead and helped draft the bill. President Bill Clinton signed it as part of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act on September 13, 1994.
It was the first major federal legislative package to stop violence against women. It has since disbursed billions of dollars in grants for lifesaving programs to curb domestic violence, sexual offenses, dating violence, and stalking. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, domestic violence rates declined by over 50% between 1993 and 2008 after Congress passed VAWA.
Before the U.S. Government adopted this law, domestic abusers could move across state lines to escape prosecution for beating their spouses. Law enforcement officers were not obligated to obey protection orders from other states. Additionally, law enforcement officials discouraged police officers from getting involved in domestic violence cases.
Lawyers who worked on the bill said it has led to a cultural change, making Americans more aware of gender-based violence. “The Violence Against Women Act, precisely because it was a federal law that took this issue seriously, created an unprecedented level of visibility for this problem,” explained Sally Goldfarb, a law professor at Rutgers Law School, in an interview with Time magazine on September 12, 2019. The latter helped monitor the bill's drafting as an attorney for the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund (currently known as Legal Momentum).
Before passing the Violence Against Women Act into law 25 years ago, Nourse (another lawyer who helped draft the bill and who TIME, on September 12, 2019, had interviewed) said that police desisted from becoming involved in domestic violence cases.
Taking part in such situations could put the officers at risk. Many people also viewed domestic violence as a family issue rather than one that called for federal regulation. “We had women testifying that the police said, 'I have to come back and see him punch you for me to arrest him,” Nourse continued.
Although a survey showed that about two-thirds of sexual assaults were perpetrated by a known acquaintance, equating “date rape” with stranger rape was contentious. When cases went to court, judges rarely took them seriously. “Judges were saying things like, ‘you wore a short skirt,’ ‘you cannot be raped,’ ‘You have been raped before, you can't be raped again,” Nourse stated. “Just ridiculous stuff that was all put in the first hearings.”
The people working on the statute sought to prove that domestic violence was not some bizarre case but “real violence,” she stressed. Those opposed to this law argued that it would be an encroachment into the private – or at least state-level – sphere.
“Modeled on the Civil Rights Act of 1964, [VAWA] stipulates that gender-biased crimes violate a woman's civil rights,” TIME (July 4, 1994), reported in a cover story about domestic violence, released just as Congress debated the law. “The victims of such crimes would therefore be eligible for compensatory relief and punitive damages. Heightened awareness may also help add bite to laws that are on the books but are often under-enforced. At present, 25 states require arrest when a reported domestic dispute turns violent. However, police often walk away if the victim refuses to press charges. Though they act quickly to separate strangers, law-enforcement officials remain wary of interfering in domestic altercations, convinced that such battles are more private and less serious. Yet, of the 5,745 women murdered in 1991, 6 out of 10 were killed by someone they knew. Half were murdered by a spouse or someone with whom they had been intimate. And that does not even hint at the level of violence against women by loved ones: while only a tiny percentage of all assaults on women result in death, the violence often involves severe physical or psychological damage.”
The lawmakers attached the final statute to the crime bill, and it passed the House 235-195—with five representatives not voting—and the Senate 61-38-1.
It provided several legal remedies for protecting women:
The law required states to enforce protection orders issued by other states.
It demanded that domestic violence and sexual assault crimes committed across state lines be prosecuted in federal courts.
It supplied inducements for states to require the mandatory arrest of perpetrators.
In addition, it financed initiatives that educated judges about gender-motivated violence and funded centers that helped victims of sexual assault and domestic violence.
In Nourse's view, Joe Biden, then the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, first suggested working on the bill because he was troubled about national attitudes about violent behavior against women — and was particularly “appalled” that people did not take marital rape seriously.
By introducing the Act in 1990, he helped bring the problem of violence against women to the national stage. In a TIME op-ed (September 10, 2014) written for the 20th anniversary of the Act, Biden hailed the bill as his “proudest legislative accomplishment,” claiming that it had helped to change cultural norms. “Abuse is violent and ugly, and today there is rightful public outrage over it. It matters that the American people have sent a clear message: you're a coward for raising a hand to a woman or child — and you're complicit if you fail to condemn it,” Biden wrote.
In 2000, in United States v. Morrison, the Supreme Court threw out what Nourse viewed as “one of the most important provisions of the Act — the Civil Rights Remedies — on the grounds that Congress had overstepped its authority under the Constitution's Commerce Clause (because the statute isn't relevant to interstate commerce) and the 14th Amendment (because the statute didn't apply to harm caused by a state). Under the original Act, that provision allowed women to challenge gender-based crimes in civil court.”
Nourse described their decision as “deeply wrong.” When a civil-rights remedy is in place, she said, “It gives more power to the woman to be able to go in and call her abuser to account.”
Goldfarb noted that even though the Supreme Court removed the provision from the VAWA and the rest of the Act, it still added to how the American society understood violence against women. Moreover, despite the Supreme Court decision, Congress has repeatedly renewed and expanded the Violence Against Women Act since 1994.
On March 15, 2022, President Biden signed the most recent reauthorization by Congress. After five years of bickering and fighting over the bill's clauses and Republican resistance to additional provisions, Democrats and Republicans eventually agreed.
Not only did they reauthorize the law's programs through 2027, but at the insistence of mostly Democrat lawmakers also added extra measures like expanded access to forensic exams for victims of sexual assault in rural communities; new funds for community-specific services for LGBTQ+ survivors of domestic violence; and new jurisdiction to tribal courts to go after non-Native offenders of sexual crimes, child abuse, stalking, sex trafficking and attacks on tribal law enforcement officers on tribal lands.
Given the horrendously high rates of domestic violence and sexual assault that Indigenous women endure on reservations from non-Native men, the enhanced protections for Native American women are particularly significant. Ninety-six percent of Indigenous women ― report being victimized by a non-Native person. Additionally, Native American women face an ongoing crisis of disappearances and murders.
Because of strong opposition by the Republicans, the lawmakers disagreed on the so-called “boyfriend loophole.” Republican lawmakers oppose strict gun laws, which violate Second Amendment rights, they allege. They also fear that supporting gun control legislation will diminish their re-election prospects. Very vocal, anti-gun control voters make up the base of the Republican Party. In addition, they do not want to lose the financial support of the National Rifle Association.
Newsweek (May, 26, 2022) published a Full List of Republican Senators Who Receive Funding From the NRA . It included the following senators:
Mitt Romney: $13,648,000
Richard Burr: $6,987,000
Roy Blunt: $4,556,000
Thom Tillis: $4,421,000
Marco Rubio: $3,303,000
Joni Ernst: $3,125,000
Josh Hawley: $1,392,000
Mitch McConnell: $1,267,000
Ted Cruz: $176,000
Although all polls show that the overwhelming of the American public support “commonsense gun safety” laws, Bernie Sanders (2018, p.145) charged, “Congress is not listening to the American people on this issue. They are listening to the very well-funded NRA, an organization with enormous political power.” The National Rifle Association lobbied aggressively against attempts to close the loophole during reauthorization debates in 1996 and 2018.
Despite studies refuting their claim, Republicans insist people must have firearms to protect themselves. Owning or carrying a gun does not provide security—the likelihood of someone getting killed increases when he or she owns a gun. In addition, a gun owner has a 500% greater chance of committing suicide.
Democrats argue that Second Amendment Rights are not absolute. They also accused Republicans of putting their political aspirations over women/public safety.
It took two mass shootings, the first at a Buffalo supermarket on May 14, 2022, and the second, ten days later, at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, to convince the Senate to act. Responding to the mass shootings, 15 Republican senators joined the 50 Democrats and agreed on a gun safety bill which, among other things, closed the “boyfriend loophole.”
As a result, the courts will not treat dating partners differently from spouses regarding gun bans because of domestic violence convictions or restraining orders. The wording of the new legislation extends the ban to those who “have or have had a continuing relationship of a romantic or intimate nature.” (April, Zeoli, “Will closing the 'boyfriend loophole' in gun legislation save lives? Here's what the research says,” “The Conversation,” June 23, 2022).
Though the bill was limited in scope and did not go as far as Congressional Democrats and President Biden desired, the latter signed it into law on June 25. With the Republicans unwilling to go further, the President and the Democrats in Congress calculated that this was the only politically workable option.
The loophole referred to the fact that while federal law prohibited firearm sales to those convicted of domestic violence against someone they have been married to, lived with, or had a child, it left out other dating partners. Advocates claimed it was a significant omission, given that the proportion of murders perpetrated by dating partners versus spouses is almost equivalent, according to a Department of Justice analysis.
The boyfriend loophole was not the only way abusers could arm themselves. According to the Charleston loophole, the applicant could purchase a firearm if the FBI did not complete a federal background check within three days. Furthermore, the law did not require background checks for private gun sellers in many states — which resulted in an estimated 22 percent of gun owners never having to get one, according to one study.
The Safer Communities Act (June 25, 2022) as the bill was named, extends the initial background check review period from three to 10 days. After ten business days, a purchaser may request an expedited review to pressure the FBI to conclude its investigation if it does not complete a background check.
The bill includes essential protection for law-abiding gun purchasers, that if law enforcement does not complete the stepped-up review within the required ten days, the sale may go forward. “This compromise will ensure that background checks for potential firearms purchasers are completed before sales proceed while also protecting the rights of law-abiding gun purchasers to purchase weapons in a timely manner," congressional representative James E. Clyburn, posted on his website (clyburn.house.gov).
Laws restricting abusers from accessing guns can be lifesaving; research shows: One 2018 study found that states with laws banning those convicted of violent misdemeanors from owning guns saw a 23 percent reduction in intimate partner homicide. ( Philip J. Cook and John J. Donohue, “Saving lives by regulating guns: Evidence for policy,” Science Dec 2017, Vol 358, Issue 6368, pp. 1259-1261).
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