Sen. Claire McCaskill passed a military sexual assault bill in the Senate on Thursday, while the Military Justice Improvement Act, a competing bill championed by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, failed.
The Associated Press
The Senate Thursday passed a set of modest reforms to rules governing sexual assault claims in the military, the culmination of a year-long debate that divided both parties, led to unexpected bipartisan alliances, and represented one of the few policy debates in Congress in years.
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand was unable to break a filibuster of her Military Justice Improvement Act, which would have created an outside system for addressing sexual assault claims in the military, but lawmakers did pass Sen. Claire McCaskill's more modest, competing plan, which among other things would prevent the "good soldier" defense in assault cases.
Although Gillibrand was defeated, her push for tougher language set off the discourse in the Senate and provided a rare opportunity for a substantive policy debate, a welcome break from the Senate's normal politically motivated rehashes of Obamacare.
Speaking to a BuzzFeed reporter, Sen. Chuck Schumer applauded Gillibrand's effort, saying "she did a very good job."
"There will be a far greater clampdown on sexual assault, even though her bill did not pass," Schumer said, noting that he voted for the bill and believes this will prompt serious changes at the Department of Defense.
Sen. John McCain told BuzzFeed that Thursday's vote was the outcome he wanted, but he feared that Gillibrand would try to attach the legislation to the Senate version of the defense budget bill.
"There will be further discussion," between Gillibrand's office and McCain's as the defense budget moves on the Hill, he said.
Others expressed their doubt that the bill would return in budget debates.
"I think we [already] had this debate; it was very rigorous and I would not expect it coming back this year," said Sen. Kelly Ayotte, noting that there was so much "we can agree to" on the McCaskill proposal. "We have already [received] cloture with 100 votes ... I don't want that to get lost," she said.
While McCaskill's bill passed with bipartisan support, some organizations that advocate for military sexual assault survivors and have been pushing for Gillibrand's bill for months expressed dissatisfaction with the outcome of the vote, saying McCaskill's bill doesn't go far enough to protect survivors of sexual violence.
"This filibuster condemns service members to an arbitrary and broken judicial process in which conflict and personal bias control the adjudicatory process," said a representative from Protect Our Defenders, an organization that advocates for military sexual assault survivors.
What exactly is the difference between the McCaskill and Gillibrand bills? What would they do?
Gillibrand and McCaskill's bills provided significantly different answers to the same question: When a service member reports a sexual assault, who should determine whether to prosecute it?
Traditionally, unit commanders have decided whether or not to prosecute sexual assault cases, but critics including Gillibrand argue that this discourages victims from reporting assaults, and results in fewer prosecutions. The Military Justice Improvement Act would give prosecutors outside the chain of command the power to decide which cases would go to trial.
McCaskill's bill, however, leaves that authority with unit commanders. In her proposal, if a commander decides not to move forward with a case, it will automatically be reviewed by a higher-ranking officer; if that commander also chooses not to prosecute it, or if the unit's legal adviser disagrees with the commander's decision, the case will move to the secretaries of the armed services — the military's senior civilian officials.
Most of these sexual assault reforms already passed late last year when the senate approved U.S. defense budget plans.
The proposal that passed Thursday will prevent service members from using the "good soldier defense," which allows military officers to use records of good conduct and length of service as evidence of their innocence in rape and sexual assault cases. It will also give survivors of sexual violence a formal say in whether their cases are heard in the military or civil justice system.
AP Photo/Susan Walsh
Why did Gillibrand's bill fail?
Gary Cameron / Reuters / Reuters
