happy friday

House GOP Unveils Alternate VAWA Proposal

Scales back protections from Senate version.

A version of the Violence Against Women Act was released by House Republicans Friday and is on the fast track to a floor vote. The proposal falls short of the aggressive reform many activists were hoping for and which were included on the already-passed Senate version of the bill. The House GOP’s scaled-down version of VAWA fails to guarantee equal coverage for LGBT, Native American, and illegal immigrant victims of domestic violence. In particular, it doesn’t protect LGBT victims from discrimination by service providers, and it creates hurdles for tribal courts to prosecute non-Native Americans who have been assaulted on tribal lands.