Senate Judiciary Ranking Member Dianne Feinstein just introduced S. 2843 the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2019! We thank Senator Feinstein for introducing this vital bill. S. 2843 is the companion to the bipartisan Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2019 (H.R. 1585) that passed the House of Representatives on April 4, 2019. It is the advocate’s bill, informed and inspired by the needs of victims and survivors of domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking. The Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2019 reauthorizes VAWA grant programs and makes modest, yet vital, enhancements to existing law.
S. 2843:
Invests in prevention;
Ends impunity for non-Native perpetrators of sexual assault, child abuse co-occurring with domestic violence, stalking, sex trafficking, and assaults on tribal law enforcement officers on tribal lands;
Improves enforcement of court orders that require adjudicated domestic abusers to relinquish their firearms;
Improves access to housing for victims and survivors;
Protects victims of dating violence from firearm homicide;
Helps survivors gain and maintain economic independence;
Updates the federal definition of domestic violence for the purposes of VAWA grants only to acknowledge the full range of abuse victims suffer (does not impact the criminal definition of domestic violence);
Maintains existing protections for all survivors; and
Improves the healthcare system’s response to domestic violence, sexual assault, dating violence, and stalking.
Contact your Senators now and tell them to SPONSOR S. 2843. You can find your Senators and their contact information here. You can also message on them on social media -- here is sample language, here are the Senators’ social media handles.
Every Senator should co-sponsor this bill, it is the VAWA survivors need. Straight reauthorization of VAWA or rollbacks of existing protections would be unacceptable!
Please contact Rachel Graber (rgraber@ncadv.org), Dorian Karp (dkarp@jwi.org), and Emily Dahl (edahl@nnedv.org) with questions.