This story was originally published by The 19th.
State legislatures craft most of the laws passed in the United States and serve as the main pipeline for higher office. But sexual harassment in state politics “remains a systemic and ongoing issue affecting both parties,” according to a recent report from the nonpartisan National Women’s Defense League (NWDL), first shared with The 19th.
“Our latest research reinforces what we already knew: the problem of sexual harassment in statehouses is pervasive, damaging and covered up,” said Emma Davidson Tribbs, the NWDL’s co-founder and director. “These abuses of power that not only inflict trauma, but impede policy making, waste taxpayer resources, and disproportionately impact the leadership of women and minorities in government.”
NWDL published its inaugural report, “Abuse of Power: Uncovering a Decade of Sexual Harassment in State Government,” which tracked allegations over a 10-year period beginning in 2013, in November 2023. The updated report, released earlier this month, identified 400 allegations of sexual harassment against 145 sitting state lawmakers between 2013 and 2024. The report tracked 11 new public allegations against lawmakers in 10 states in 2024 and included four allegations inadvertently omitted from the 2023 report. The number of actual incidents is likely three times higher due to underreporting, the report said.
Public allegations of sexual misconduct against state lawmakers peaked at the height of the #MeToo movement in 2017 and 2018, leading to new protections and policy changes in some states. NWDL was founded in 2022 to track, research and develop solutions to the pervasive problem of sexual misconduct in the halls of power.
There are over 7,300 state lawmakers serving in 99 state legislative chambers throughout the United States. State legislatures are largely self-governing bodies, and even after a spate of post-#MeToo reforms, many lawmakers surveyed said the mechanisms for reporting misconduct in their states are lacking.
Read here the full article published by Stateline on 27 March 2025.
Image by Stateline
