begin quote from:
Senate paid out $1.45 million in settlements
House still working on overhauling harassment procedures
Senate committee releases settlement details from cases since 1997
Sexual harassment allegations on Capitol Hill 05:05
Story highlights
- The lack of disclosure came to light this week following Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine's request
- The Senate Rules and Administration Committee is chaired by GOP Sen. Richard Shelby
(CNN)A
key Senate committee on Thursday night publicly released data about
workplace settlements reached and paid out in the Senate since 1997,
totaling some two dozen cases amounting to $1.45 million.
The
breakdown, which the Senate Rules and Administration Committee said was
information provided by the Office of Compliance, included 13
settlements for claims involving Senate offices. They totaled close to
$600,000 over a span of 20 years. The descriptions for the complaints
included discrimination based on sex, age and disability, but there was
no explicit mention of sexual harassment. There were also 10 additional
settlements involving claims against non-member-led Senate offices,
totaling $853,000.
The
Office of Compliance has previously said it considers sexual harassment
under the category of sex discrimination. In a letter to Sen. Tim Kaine,
a Virginia Democrat, responding to his request for additional
information, the compliance office said, "Traditionally, the OOC has not
separated allegations of sexual harassment from those involving
sex-based disparate treatment or pregnancy discrimination."
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"In
fact, for many years, the Office simply classified all claims alleging
discrimination of any kind as civil rights cases without any further
differentiation," the agency said in the letter. "Thus, there are claims
in our files that are classified in the category of 'civil rights'
which may or may not contain an allegation of sex-based discrimination.
Further, there are claims classified as sex discrimination which may not
involve allegations of sexual harassment, such as claims of disparate
treatment based on sex."
That means
it is impossible to determine from the the data released Thursday night
whether there were any sexual harassment settlements reached in the
Senate, or how much those settlements would have totaled.
According to the OOC data, there were four sex discrimination-related settlements in the Senate.
Committee
Chairman Sen. Richard Shelby, an Alabama Republican, said in a
statement releasing the information that "Harassment in the workplace
should not be tolerated under any circumstances, but particularly not in
the United States Senate."
"While
the Rules Committee has been eager to provide this information in a
transparent manner, it has been our priority to protect the victims
involved in these settlements from further harm," Shelby said. "I am
pleased that we have received assurances from Senate Legal Counsel that
the release of this data does not violate confidentiality and as such,
are able to make it public."
Not
all settlements are handled through the Office of Compliance. For
instance, one of the cases related to Rep. John Conyers, who resigned
earlier this month, was settled outside of the compliance office
process.
The information released
Thursday night had not previously been made public. This lack of
disclosure came to light this week following Kaine's formal request
earlier this month to the Office of Compliance. Kaine asked for a
release of records detailing the scope of sexual harassment complaints
filed against Senate offices over the years.
In a letter to the head of the office, Kaine had asked for a release of records detailing
the scope of sexual harassment complains in the Senate, including the
number of harassment claims filed over the last decade against senators
and their staff; the number of claims that ended in "some form of
resolution"; and the amount of each settlement paid out from a fund set
up with taxpayer dollars.
But in a
response to Kaine's request, the compliance office's executive director,
Susan Tsui Grundmann, wrote this week that a statistical breakdown was
already shared with the Senate Rules and Administration Committee, and
that any additional disclosure would invade "strictly confidential
records."
Shelby's decision to not
publicly disclose this information until now comes amid widespread and
bipartisan calls across Capitol Hill in recent weeks for increased
transparency on sexual harassment. It is also particularly notable given
that the senator's counterpart in the House -- House Administration
Committee Chairman Gregg Harper -- has released comparable information
about sexual harassment settlements involving House offices over the
years.
According to Harper, he was informed by the Office of Compliance that there were three settlement payouts in the House related to sexual harassment between 2008 and 2012,
totaling $115,000. And from 2013 to the present, Harper said there was
just one sexual harassment settlement involving a House office for
$84,000. Subsequently, this was revealed to have involved GOP Rep. Blake
Farenthold of Texas and a former aide who accused him of sexual
harassment. Farenthold has said he will not seek re-election next year.
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