In the News

By ASHLEY PARKER

WASHINGTON — The House on Thursday gave final approval to a renewal of the Violence Against Women Act, sending a bipartisan Senate measure to President Obama after a House plan endorsed by conservatives was defeated.

 

The legislation passed on a vote of 286 to 138, with 199 Democrats joining 87 Republicans in support of the reauthorization of the landmark 1994 law, which assists victims of domestic and sexual violence. It amounted to a significant victory for the president and Congressional Democrats, who have assailed Republicans for months for stalling the legislation.

 

The successful measure passed the Senate last month with 78 votes — including those of every woman, all Democrats and just over half of Republicans.

 

The alternative unveiled by the House last Friday immediately came under sharp criticism from Democrats and women’s and human rights groups for failing to include protections in the Senate bill for gay, bisexual or transgender victims of domestic abuse. The House bill eliminated “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” from a list of “populations” that face barriers to receiving victim services — and also stripped certain provisions regarding American Indian women on reservations.

 

With House Republicans divided, the leadership agreed that it would allow a vote on the Senate bill if the House version could not attract sufficient votes, and it failed on a vote of 257 to 166. Sixty Republicans joined 197 Democrats in opposition; 164 Republicans and 2 Democrats voted for it.

 

The newly passed legislation creates and expands federal programs to assist local communities with law enforcement and aiding victims of domestic and sexual abuse. Most notably, the bill goes further by offering protections for gay, bisexual or transgender victims of domestic abuse, as well as allowing American Indian women who are assaulted on reservations by non-Indians to take their case to tribal courts, which otherwise would not have jurisdiction over assailants who do not live on tribal land. (The failed House bill offered the same provision, but also offered non-Indian defendants the possibility to take their case to a federal court).

 

The legislation’s approval underscored the divide in the Republican party as it struggles to regain its footing with women after its 2012 electoral drubbing among female voters. House Republicans — even split at the leadership level — ultimately bowed to what they saw as the best interests of their party nationally, even if that meant overriding the will of the majority of rank-and-file Republicans.

 

The vote represented the third time in two months that Speaker John A. Boehner has brought a bill to the floor without having the support of most House Republicans. A deal to avert automatic tax increases at the beginning of the year, as well as a relief package for states hit by Hurricane Sandy, also passed the House largely with the support of Democratic votes.

 

“If we’re supplying the votes, we should be helping to write the bills,” said Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the Democratic leader, highlighting the Republican dilemma on some of these high-profile votes.

 

At the leadership level, Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the majority leader who helped engineer the vote, ultimately opposed the bill, while Representatives Kevin McCarthy of California, the No. 3 Republican, and Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, the House Budget Committee chairman, both voted in favor. Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers, the chairwoman of the House Republican Conference, who spearheaded the House’s bill, also voted in favor of the final, Senate-passed legislation.

 

Republicans said that their version of the bill included protections for “all women,” a point they repeatedly made on the House floor on Thursday. But the very public controversy surrounding the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, which expired during the last Congress when the House was unable to reach a compromise, highlighted problems Republicans are having with female voters.

 

During the 2012 presidential election, Mr. Obama beat Mitt Romney among women by 11 percentage points, earning 55 percent of the female vote, and Republicans lost several high-profile races amid a backlash from female voters after the Republican candidates made controversial statements about rape or abortion. Though Republicans maintained control of the House, Democratic House candidates won 56 percent of the female vote, according to exit polls.

 

Last month, more than 1,300 women’s and human rights groups signed a letter supporting the Senate legislation.

 

“Over more than two decades, this law has saved countless lives and transformed the way we treat victims of abuse,” Mr. Obama said in a statement. “Today’s vote will go even further by continuing to reduce domestic violence, improving how we treat victims of rape, and extending protections to Native American women and members of the L.G.B.T. community.”

 

“Renewing this bill is an important step towards making sure no one in America is forced to live in fear, and I look forward to signing it into law as soon as it hits my desk,” Mr. Obama said.

 

On Thursday, Democrat after Democrat stood on the House floor, urging their colleagues to reject what they said was the weaker House version.

 

Representative Gwen Moore, Democrat of Wisconsin and a victim of domestic and sexual violence herself, spoke passionately about the need to pass the Senate’s bill.

 

“I pray that this body will do as the Senate has done and come together as one to protect all women from violence,” Ms. Moore said. “As I think about the L.G.B.T. victims who are not here, the native women who are not here, the immigrants who aren’t in this bill, I would say, as Sojourner Truth would say, ‘Ain’t they women?’ ”

 

“Ain’t they women?” she repeated emphatically.

 

Some Republicans, however, remained upset that the bill was brought to the floor knowing that it would most likely require Democratic votes to pass — a trend that has worried and angered conservative members of the conference. Speaking at a public conversation with fellow conservative members on Wednesday, Representative Raúl Labrador, Republican of Idaho, said that while he did not necessarily oppose the content of the Senate’s version of the Violence Against Women Act, he was frustrated that it was unlikely to go through the formal committee process. “It’s a huge concern,” he said.