Congress has renewed a 1990s-era law that extends protections to victims of domestic and sexual violence, updating the landmark Violence Against Women Act nearly three years after it lapsed due to Republican opposition.
It passed this week as part of a $1.5 trillion government funding package and capped years of work by members of the House and Senate. It is certain to win the signature of President Joe Biden, who worked on the law during his days in the Senate.
Passage of the legislation brought a rare moment of bipartisan agreement in the Congress, achieved partly on the strength of the personal connections that lawmakers have to domestic violence and its devastating effects.
For North Dakota Sen. Kevin Cramer, the connection is his adopted son whose biological mother was murdered by her husband. For Sen. Lisa Murkowski, it’s the need to expand the tribal jurisdiction over non-Indian offenders in her home state of Alaska. For Rep. Sheila Lee Jackson, it comes back to the frantic phone calls she received at the Houston Women’s Center in the 1990s.
