During the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime’s May 11 mark-up of a bill (H.R. 1248) to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act, Rep. Bill McCollum (R-FL) offered an amendment that would make several technical changes to the bill.
The amendment would define underserved populations as “populations underserved by geographic locations (such as rural isolation), underserved racial and ethnic populations, populations underserved because of special needs (such as language barriers, disability or age), and any other population determined to be underserved by the state.”
Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) offered an amendment that would have added religion, sexual orientation, and alienage status, but the amendment was defeated. Those three categories were included in the original version of H.R. 1248.
The House Judiciary Committee is tentatively scheduled to mark up the bill next week.
