Senate Votes Down Amendment to Remove Tribal Provisions from Violence Against Women Act

Press Release

Today on the Senate floor, U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA),Chairwoman of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, urged her Senate colleagues to reject an amendment to the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2013 (S.47) that would have stripped critical protections for Tribal women. The amendment was defeated by a vote of 31-59 this evening.

The amendmentwould have removed the vast majority of Section 904 of the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act, whichensures that non-Indian defendants in Tribal court are afforded due process in a manner consistent with state and federal courts. This includes the right to effective assistance of counsel, the right to a trial by an impartial jury, as well as all other Constitutional rights.
"This isn't about politics. This isn't about a debate on what is a good way to win votes somewhere in America," Cantwell said in a floor speech prior to the vote. "This is about the life and death of women who need a better system to help prosecute those who are committing serious crimes against them."

Watch a video of Senator Cantwell's floor speech here.

Last week Senator Cantwell spoke on the Senate floorabout a similar amendment that would overturn Tribal jurisdiction and limit the ability of Tribal courts to punish non-Indian domestic violence offenders who assault Indian women.

Cantwell is an original co-sponsor of the bill introduced by Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) on January 22, 2013. Since the first VAWA bill passed in 1994, domestic violence has decreased by 53 percent. The reauthorization bill includes critical improvements to extend domestic violence protections to individuals, including women in Tribal communities, who are currently not protected. An estimated 40 percent of Native women experience domestic violence in their lifetimes. Eighty percent of perpetrators of these crimes are non-Indian, and under current law, are not likely to be prosecuted by Tribal governments.

Previous reauthorizations of VAWA have been approved in a timely fashion with overwhelming support.Last Congress, a similar Senate version of the VAWA reauthorization bill passed the Senate by a bipartisan vote of 68-31, but ultimately stalled in the House. S. 47 has 60 co-sponsors and is expected to head to the Senate floor for final passage tomorrow.

Cantwell has been a consistent champion for the reauthorization of VAWA. In December, she joined six of her female Democratic Senate colleagues to call for House passage of VAWA before Congress adjourned for the year. In April 2012, she joined Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) at the King County Sheriff's office to highlight the benefits of the bill to local law enforcement.

Excerpts from Senator Cantwell's remarks:

· "This isn't about politics. This isn't about a debate on what is a good way to win votes somewhere in America. This is about the life and death of women who need a better system to help prosecute those who are committing serious crimes against them."

· "If you think you are rooting out crime in America and you are letting a sieve happen in Indian Country you are not rooting out crime. You are sending a signal to people that this is an easy place to go. You are saying that this is the place where you can escape the law."

· "But clearly we should not ignore the statistics and the gap that are showing us that we need to do something very important to make sure that all women, including Native American women, no longer suffer these statistics that are just unbearable in the United States of America."

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