Hank Johnson: “I thank the chairman for allowing me to speak, and I want to commend my colleague, Representative Cheri Bustos, for…”

“I thank the chairman for allowing me to speak, and I want to commend my colleague, Representative Cheri Bustos, for introducing this very important legislation. It is a travesty of justice for a woman to be subjected to sexual harassment and even sexual assault on the job. Oftentimes, it takes place in a job setting where there is a culture of sexual harassment and sexual assault. And when these women find after they have been assaulted that they are barred from going to court because somehow they have been hoodwinked into a forced arbitration agreement with their employer, they are surprised because at that point they have been assaulted for a second time because when they go into arbitration you often find that the deck is stacked against the victim in favor of the perpetrator. This legislation gets at that problem by making those kinds of agreements unenforceable. I fully support this legislation. I would ask all of my colleagues to support it. It is good, commonsense legislation. Justice is all that is asked for.”