Today Georgia state Rep. Earl Ehrhart has forced a vote on his wildly unpopular campus rape bill, which would further tip the scales of justice in favor of rapists. House Bill 51 is an anti-rape advocate’s nightmare. It takes the tiny sliver of hope for justice that campus survivors have when they report—and mercilessly snuffs it out.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution explains what happened:
House Bill 51 mandates more due process rights to the accused while also drastically limiting the ability of the state’s public colleges to investigate and punish allegations of rape. Sponsored by the former House Rules chair but still influential state Rep. Earl Ehrhart, R-Powder Springs, the bill was criticized as an over correction by those who work with sexual assault victims, only a small percentage of whom ever report what happened to them.
Unlike the House, which belittled the concern of sexual assault survivors that the bill would cause even fewer victims to come forward, the Senate Judiciary Committee decided the issue was too complex and the implications too unclear to act. The committee unanimously voted to table the bill, and Ehrhart promised to work with them to improve the bill.
But we know better than to think state Rep. Ehrhart would take “no” for an answer.
Instead, the House Rules Committee seized on Senate Bill 71 — legislation dealing with bankruptcies and health savings accounts — and gutted it Tuesday. Then, House members swapped in the language of the moribund HB 51.
So SB 71 (aka The Bill Formerly Known as HB 51) lives to see another day.
To read more about the bill and why survivors and allies are working hard to defeat it, check out this post via Know Your IX below: