Inhofe and Coburn Vote AGAINST the Franken Amendment

The Senate passed an amendment (68-30) to the 2010 Defense Appropriations bill which would keep the government from signing defense contracts with companies that prevent employees from taking "workplace sexual assault, battery and discrimination cases to court." Instead these companies force employees to settle the dispute in arbitration where a supposedly neutral third party rules. The Franken amendment was inspired by the workplace experiences of Jamie Leigh Jones. Think Progress explains:

In 2005, Jamie Leigh Jones was gang-raped by her co-workers while she was working for Halliburton/KBR in Baghdad. She was detained in a shipping container for at least 24 hours without food, water, or a bed, and “warned her that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, she’d be out of a job.” (Jones was not an isolated case.) Jones was prevented from bringing charges in court against KBR because her employment contract stipulated that sexual assault allegations would only be heard in private arbitration.

Arbitration might be an adequate solution in some cases, such as money disputes, but when the "dispute" is rape, it's a problem. Franken argued that "The constitution gives everybody the right to due process of law … And today, defense contractors are using fine print in their contracts to deny women like Jamie Leigh Jones their day in court." This brings up scary questions. Rape is a felony and punishable with fines and jail time. What happens to a rapist in the arbitration process? I'm assuming the company pays a fine to the victim, but is there jail time for the attacker? Is the employee accused and found guilty of rape fired? I tried to find statistics relevent to these questions, but it was difficult. Most arbitration cases are confidential. The details and outcomes are never publicized, so it's hard to know how many sexual assault charges are actually disputed in arbitration and what happens to the accused.

I did find an NPR story from June 2009 about Jamie Leigh Jones' case. It's been four years since her ordeal and the Justice Department has declined to investigate. She also claims that her attackers continue to work for KBR. She never entered into arbitration with KBR (she is suing in civil court for the right to sue in criminal court - gotta love the American legal system), so we can't know if these men would've been fired once the arbitrator ruled. But even if she had entered into arbitration, we STILL wouldn't know what would have happened to her attackers because of the secrecy of the process.

Opponents of Franken's bill claimed that the legislation "overreached into the private sector and suggested that it violated the due process clause of the Constitution." Franken replied quoting the Constitution. "Article 1 Section 8 of our Constitution gives Congress the right to spend money for the welfare of our citizens. Because of this, Chief Justice Rehnquist wrote, 'Congress may attach conditions on the receipt of federal funds and has repeatedly employed that power to further broad policy objectives,'" Franken said. "That is why Congress could pass laws cutting off highway funds to states that didn't raise their drinking age to 21. That's why this whole bill [the Defense Appropriations bill] is full of limitations on contractors -- what bonuses they can give and what kind of health care they can offer. The spending power is a broad power and my amendment is well within it."

Senator Franken and those supporting the amendment took a stand for rape survivors today, and BOTH our senators sided with corporations. This is obviously ridiculous. Tell Senators Coburn and Inhofe to take rape seriously!