ABSTRACT
Congress passed the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) as a part of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1996. The VAWA provision that ultimately became the subject of a Supreme Court case was section 13,981, which proclaimed that "all persons within the United States shall have the right to be free from crimes of violence motivated by gender." The law's framers held hearings over a period of three years during which they collected evidence of the impact of gender-based violence on women's health, education, employment, and general mobility. They found this evidence showed that violence against women had a substantial impact on the national economy. Some commentators found that although Antonio Morrison removed the opportunity for victims of gender- motivated violence to sue in federal court, the defeat was mostly symbolic because the remedy would have been used by only a few victims.
