Providing for Consideration of H.R. Forced Arbitration Injustice Repeal Act of and Providing for Consideration of H.R. Creating A Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair Act of 2021
Floor Speech
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Mrs. TORRES of California. Madam Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 979 and ask for its immediate consideration.
The Clerk read the resolution, as follows: H. Res. 979
Resolved, That upon adoption of this resolution it shall be in order to consider in the House the bill (H.R. 963) to amend title 9 of the United States Code with respect to arbitration. All points of order against consideration of the bill are waived. In lieu of the amendment in the nature of a substitute recommended by the Committee on the Judiciary now printed in the bill, an amendment in the nature of a substitute consisting of the text of Rules Committee Print 117-34 shall be considered as adopted. The bill, as amended, shall be considered as read. All points of order against provisions in the bill, as amended, are waived. The previous question shall be considered as ordered on the bill, as amended, and on any amendment thereto, to final passage without intervening motion except: (1) one hour of debate equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of the Committee on the Judiciary or their respective designees; (2) the further amendment printed in the report of the Committee on Rules accompanying this resolution, if offered by the Member designated in the report, which shall be in order without intervention of any point of order, shall be considered as read, shall be separately debatable for the time specified in the report equally divided and controlled by the proponent and an opponent, and shall not be subject to a demand for division of the question; and (3) one motion to recommit.
Sec. 2. Upon adoption of this resolution it shall be in order to consider in the House the bill (H.R. 2116) to prohibit discrimination based on an individual's texture or style of hair. All points of order against consideration of the bill are waived. In lieu of the amendment in the nature of a substitute recommended by the Committee on the Judiciary now printed in the bill, an amendment in the nature of a substitute consisting of the text of Rules Committee Print 117-36 shall be considered as adopted. The bill, as amended, shall be considered as read. All points of order against provisions in the bill, as amended, are waived. The previous question shall be considered as ordered on the bill, as amended, and on any further amendment thereto, to final passage without intervening motion except: (1) one hour of debate equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of the Committee on the Judiciary or their respective designees; and (2) one motion to recommit.
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Mrs. TORRES of California. Madam Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentlewoman from Minnesota (Mrs. Fischbach), pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only. General Leave
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Mrs. TORRES of California. Madam Speaker, the Rules Committee met on and reported a rule, House Resolution 979, providing for consideration of H.R. 963, the FAIR Act, under a structured rule. It provides 1 hour of debate equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking member of the Committee on the Judiciary. It makes in order one amendment and provides one motion to recommit.
The rule also provides for consideration of H.R. 2116, the CROWN Act, under a closed rule. The rule provides 1 hour of debate equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking member of the Committee on the Judiciary and provides one motion to recommit.
Madam Speaker, the bills we discuss today have to do with fundamental American values.
The first bill under this rule, the FAIR Act, simply restores the right of individuals to have their day in court. It prevents the use of forced arbitration clauses in consumer and employment contracts.
Most likely, all of us have signed a contract with a forced arbitration clause, and many may not even know it. How many Americans have read their cell phone contract? How many have read their credit card contract?
Too many consumer contracts are written to protect the pockets of corporations, leaving consumers at the mercy of a system created by, paid by, and focused on minimizing liabilities of corporate companies.
These documents are dozens of pages long, and most contain clauses that require arbitration in case of a legal dispute and prevent the consumer from going to court as an alternative. There is no negotiation or choice.
Ask yourselves, if you saw something that you objected to in a contract for your cell phone, what option do you have to change it? The answer is no choice at all.
That is why this is called forced arbitration, and these requirements game the system in favor of one party, large corporations. If there is a dispute, corporations get to pick the location of arbitration, and in many cases, it is out of State; pick the arbitrator; and pay for them. Yes, the impartial arbitrator, who depends on corporate contractors, is paid for by the corporation. And corporations get to shield the results from the public. Imagine that.
The FAIR Act stops this harmful and abusive behavior. It bans forced arbitration clauses in employment, civil rights, and consumer disputes.
Congress just passed legislation that changed this process for disputes involving sexual harassment. However, there are tens of millions of Americans who are still affected by forced arbitration in other contexts, and this legislation provides those same protections to them as well.
Ensuring fairness under the law is at the center of the second bill being considered under this rule, the CROWN Act. This bill would ensure that discrimination based on race is not masked as discrimination about hairstyles.
But this year, Republicans decided that something had changed--not with the legislation, but with their Conference--since they objected to the consideration of this bill under suspension.
The CROWN Act simply clarifies what studies have shown, that oftentimes women, particularly Black women, are discriminated against based on their natural hair.
Courts have rejected previous guidance finding that discrimination on the basis of hairstyle or hair texture is a violation of the Civil Rights Act. So, this legislation simply makes these protections clear, that you cannot discriminate on the basis of a person's hair texture or hairstyle if that style or texture is commonly associated with a particular race or national origin.
I believe that both of these bills will help to make our legal system more fair for every single one of us. I urge passage of the rule and these bills.
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Mrs. TORRES of California. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Madam Speaker, I am going to share three stories from hardworking Americans.
Connie Nagrampa, a California resident, started working as a franchisee for a marketing company. The company cheated her out of her investments, her life investments. When she tried to seek accountability, they forced her into arbitration.
The company, conveniently enough for them, chose to move the arbitration process across the country to the city of Boston. A California resident was expected to fly herself and pay for all of her expenses to Boston to seek justice. It was too expensive, obviously, for somebody who has just lost her life savings. She lost the arbitration as a result, and the arbitrator said she had to pay more money to the company. Connie spent years attempting to overturn that unjust cause.
Now let me tell you about a brave American Navy reservist, Lieutenant Commander Kevin Ziober, whose employer fired him the same day he was deployed to Afghanistan. This is blatantly illegal under Federal law. But because the employer had forced all of their employees to sign a forced arbitration clause, he was unable to make his claim in Federal court and get his job back.
That is what they are defending.
Let me tell you about another brave military servicemember, Charles Beard, whose rights under the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, SCRA, were violated by his bank.
SCRA is a bipartisan law which provides financial and legal protections to servicemembers and their families when they are on Active Duty. This is especially important given how vulnerable Active Duty servicemembers can be to predatory lending schemes, identity theft, or other unfair financial practices when they are deployed or on Active Duty.
Mr. Beard is a former sergeant in the Army National Guard, now 100 percent VA disabled. When he was on tour in Iraq, his wife at the time and their five children relied on one vehicle. One day the bank decided to repossess that vehicle. It was no longer convenient to keep that loan open for somebody risking their life for us, our country.
This, too, was a violation of the Federal law SCRA because he was deployed. When he tried to hold the bank publicly accountable in court, he was forced into arbitration because of a forced arbitration clause buried in the fine print.
These are just three stories of hardworking Americans. These are the stories of real people that we need to stand up for and protect.
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Mrs. TORRES of California. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Today, we are supposed to be debating two very important bills to help Americans continue to thrive in this great country, but instead my colleagues across the aisle want to debate about something that they know is incorrect.
There are over 9,000 approved drilling permits the oil industry is not using. And the truth is that changes in domestic energy policy often take years to impact global energy markets. They know that.
But instead, what is happening here is oil companies are using Putin's war as an excuse to jack up prices at the pump even more, and then they argue for looser regulations, cheaper drilling, and more pollution.
Madam Speaker, I include in the Record a March 4, 2022, opinion article from The Guardian written by House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Raul Grijalva entitled ``Oil and Gas Lobbyists are Using Ukraine to Push for a Drilling Free-for-All in the U.S.'' [From the Guardian, Mar. 4, 2022]
Oil and Gas Lobbyists Are Using Ukraine To Push for a Drilling Free- for-All in the US (By Raul M. Grijalva)
Last week, we all watched in horror as Vladimir Putin launched a deadly, catastrophic attack on Ukraine, violating international treaties across the board. Most of us swiftly condemned his actions and pledged support for the Ukrainian people whose country, homes and lives are under attack.
But the fossil-fuel industry had a different take. They saw an opportunity--and a shameless one at that--to turn violence and bloodshed into an oil and gas propaganda-generating scheme. Within hours, industry-led talking points were oozing into press releases, social media and opinion pieces, telling us the key to ending this crisis is to immediately hand US public lands and waters over to fossil-fuel companies and quickly loosen the regulatory strings.
Our top priority must be ending Putin's hostilities, but as chair of the US House committee on natural resources, I feel duty-bound to set the record straight. We can't let the fossil-fuel industry scare us into a domestic drilling free- for-all that is neither economically warranted nor environmentally sound.
Despite industry's claims to the contrary, President Biden has not hobbled US oil and gas development. In fact, much to my deep disappointment and protest, this administration actually approved more US drilling permits per month in 2021 than President Trump did during each of the first three years of his presidency. Before the pandemic, oil and gas production from public lands and waters reached an all-time high, and the current administration has done little to change that trajectory over the last 13 months.
Fossil-fuel companies and their backers in Congress also profess that more drilling on public lands and waters would lower gas prices for Americans. But if that's true, why hasn't record oil extraction from both federal and non- federal lands over the last decade done anything to consistently lower, or at least stabilize, prices at the pump?
The fact is that crude oil is a volatile global commodity. Worldwide supply, demand, and unpredictable events--like wars--influence the price of gas, not the current administration's decision to approve a few new leases or permits.
Even if we take industry's claims at face value, nothing is keeping fossil-fuel companies from more drilling on public lands right now. The oil industry already controls at least 26m acres of public land and is sitting on more than 9,000 approved drilling permits they're not using.
They have a similarly gratuitous surplus offshore, where nearly 75% of their active federal oil and gas leases, covering over 8m acres, have yet to produce a single drop. Any new leases issued today wouldn't produce anything of value for years, or even decades in some cases.
If industry did start to ramp up production from federal leases, the overall increase to the total US supply would likely be marginal. In 2020, public lands and waters only accounted for 22% and 11% of oil and gas production, respectively. The vast majority of oil and gas resources are beneath state and private lands--not public lands or federal waters.
With the facts laid bare, we see the fossil-fuel industry's crocodile tears for what they are--the same old demands for cheaper leases and looser regulations they've been peddling for decades. These pleas have nothing to do with countering Putin's invasion or stabilizing gas prices, and everything to do with making oil and gas development as easy and profitable as possible.
The US is the world's top oil and gas producer. Doubling down on fossil fuels is a false solution that only perpetuates the problems that got us here in the first place.
And quite frankly, we can't afford to maintain the status quo. In its newest report the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued its most dire warning yet on the rapidly accelerating climate crisis. If we fail to enact major mitigation efforts, like curbing fossil-fuel development, both quickly and substantially, we will ``miss a brief and rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a livable and sustainable future for all''.
Fortunately, there is a path forward that simultaneously cuts the lifeline to fossil-fuel despots like Putin, stabilizes energy prices here at home, and creates a safer, more sustainable planet. We must wean ourselves off our oil and gas dependence and make transformational investments in cleaner renewable energy technologies, like those in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the Build Back Better Act and the Competes Act, and we must do it now.
The fossil-fuel industry has had hold of the microphone for far too long. It's time we let the facts speak for themselves.
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Mrs. TORRES of California. Madam Speaker, if my colleagues were so concerned about oil prices or the welfare and security of humanity in the crisis that is happening in Ukraine, maybe they should have stepped up and inquired about the five meetings that the previous administration held in secret without staff, only a translator, with Vladimir Putin.
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Mrs. TORRES of California. Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mrs. TORRES of California. Madam Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.
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Mrs. TORRES of California. Madam Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.
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Mrs. TORRES of California. Madam Speaker, the rule allows for consideration of these two bills, which will ensure that we are providing better protections for consumers and employees.
The FAIR Act stops large corporations from gaming the system in their favor, and allows consumers the opportunity to have their day in court.
And the CROWN Act ensures that we do not allow discrimination in any way, shape, or form. These are commonsense bills that help the American people.
The material previously referred to by Mrs. Fischbach is as follows: Amendment to House Resolution 979
At the end of the resolution, add the following:
Sec. 3. Immediately upon adoption of this resolution, the House shall proceed to the consideration in the House of the bill (H.R. 6858) to strengthen United States energy security, encourage domestic production of crude oil, petroleum products, and natural gas, and for other purposes. All points of order against consideration of the bill are waived. The bill shall be considered as read. All points of order against provisions in the bill are waived. The previous question shall be considered as ordered on the bill and on any amendment thereto to final passage without intervening motion except: (1) one hour of debate equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of the Committee on Energy and Commerce; and (2) one motion to recommit.
Sec. 4. Clause l(c) of rule XIX shall not apply to the consideration of H.R. 6858.
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Mrs. TORRES of California. Madam Speaker, I urge a ``yes'' vote on the rule and the previous question. I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question on the resolution.
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