Waterworks Soccer win Girls on board


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Celebrating at the White House: the author (second from left, in blue); tribal leaders and advocates with members of Congress and the Biden administration (right)


members (all Republicans) supporting it. In 2020, coalition members pivot- ed, focusing heavily on advocating for emergency COVID-19 funding con- nected to the rising incidence of do- mestic and sexual violence even as our VAWA efforts continued. In January 2021, control of the


publican majority’s refusal to conduct a thorough and bipartisan investiga- tion into the sexual assault claims against Kavanaugh made by Ford and others. We decamped to the House. Fortunately, January 2019 ushered


in a new Democrat-led House. We introduced a bipartisan bill, which the House passed with 263 votes, only 33 of them Republican. The House hear- ing on the bill became partisan when Republicans on the Judiciary Com- mittee called as their only witness a trans-exclusionary radical feminist to echo their contention that trans women represented a threat in the context of domestic violence shelters, a view which we, under the banner of #VAWA4ALL, rejected. Once the bill returned to the Sen-


ate, we spent significant time negoti- ating, but to no avail. In November 2019, each side introduced its own bill: The Democrats’ bill had all the party’s members in support plus two Independents for a total of 46; the Re- publican bill, by contrast, had only 13


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Senate shifted and we now had a pres- ident who wanted us to finish the job. But we were also in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. By March, the House was able to pass a bill similar to the one from a year prior but with some important amendments, includ- ing several from Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.). One such amendment will ensure that all institutions of higher education conduct climate surveys. “By requiring climate surveys of stu- dents at colleges and universities on sexual and domestic violence,” Speier says, “we will better monitor the effi- cacy of our reforms and the pervasive- ness of campus violence, which too often is swept under the rug.” We turned to the Senate once again


but were hampered by the divided chamber (with 50 members in the Democratic caucus and 50 Republi- cans). We found that we had to rene- gotiate the bill, even though it was substantively the same one that we’d worked on with the Senate previously. Fall arrived and there were a num-


ber of issues still needing significant negotiation and areas where consen- sus could not be achieved. The final bill would have no immigration sec- tion ensuring adequate resources for immigrant survivors and raising the cap on the number of trafficking and violence victims allowed a U visa. There would be no gun regulation


closing the “boyfriend loophole” to protect survivors of dating violence and no provision requiring states to provide unemployment insurance for those who have to leave their jobs be- cause of domestic or sexual violence. Finally, in mid-February, a biparti-


san consensus bill was introduced, and in early March, Senate and House leadership agreed to add VAWA to the omnibus spending bill that would fund government operations for the remainder of fiscal year 2022. VAWA itself, according to our coalition’s cal- culations, was funded at $641 million, representing a $69 million increase. Other key improvements include


increased services and support for survivors from underserved and mar- ginalized communities—including for LGBTQ+ survivors of domestic violence, dating violence, sexual as- sault and stalking; funding survivor- centered, community-based services that promote restorative justice, safe- ty and healing; and expanding special criminal jurisdiction of tribal courts to cover non-Indian perpetrators of sex- ual assault, child abuse, stalking, sex trafficking and assaults on tribal law enforcement officers on tribal lands. At the White House celebration,


I saw Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D- Texas), who has led the reauthorization battle since 2018. She was jubilant. “With the rise of domestic vio-


lence and sexual assault cases during this COVID-19 crisis,” Jackson Lee says, “the reauthorization of this transformative legislation empowers law enforcement agencies and advo- cacy groups to protect survivors with resources provided by this new law.” —LISALYN R. JACOBS


LISALYN R. JACOBS is the CEO of Just Solutions and the former vice president of government relations for Legal Momentum.


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