Next chapter of Equal: Using Civil Rights to Combat Violence

22, Using Civil Rights to Combat Violence

Following the passage of civil rights legislation after the Civil War, the Supreme Court had adopted a narrow jurisprudence based on states rights – a jurisprudence that had resulted in Plessy v. Ferguson. These precedents would create difficulties for the civil rights laws passed in the 1960s as well as the Violence Against Women Act.

However, the right of a victim to sue her attacker had survived. Under VAWA, a civil action would exist, based on the Fourteenth Amendment.

Biden was supported by the NOW Legal Defense Fund, and its staff attorney Sally Goldfarb. They drew on evidence gathered throughout the country from task forces on gender bias in the courts.

A Minnesota judge [Ed. Note: Kathleen Sanberg], chair of the state's gender bias task force, said, “'Acquaintance rape' promises to be one of the major upcoming issues with which the legal system must learn to deal effectively and with fairness to the victim.”

A task force was created from diverse women's groups throughout the country to vigorously debate the issues and came up with a consensus that VAWA should include a civil rights section.

Pat Reuss, of the now folded Women's Equity Action League, became a grassroots organizer. She saw VAWA as a civil rights law that belonged to women everywhere, not just litigants at the Supreme Court. By early 1992, 50 percent of the senators and 40 percent of the representatives had become VAWA co-sponsors. “The prospects for VAWA seemed too good to be true.”