KBR rape case to influence rules for contractors
Prompted by the alleged rape of former KBR employee Jamie Leigh Jones, Congress is poised to pass a measure banning defense contractors from forcing employees to use arbitration to resolve claims of discrimination and sexual assault. House and Senate negotiators agreed to include the no-arbitration provision in a $636 billion defense spending bill that passed the House 395-34 on Wednesday. The measure now heads to the Senate, which is expected to pass it before Christmas.

KBR rape case to influence rules for contractors

By JENNIFER A. DLOUHY Houston Chronicle
Dec. 16, 2009

WASHINGTON — Prompted by the alleged rape of former KBR employee Jamie Leigh Jones, Congress is poised to pass a measure banning defense contractors from forcing employees to use arbitration to resolve claims of discrimination and sexual assault.

House and Senate negotiators agreed to include the no-arbitration provision in a $636 billion defense spending bill that passed the House 395-34 on Wednesday. The measure now heads to the Senate, which is expected to pass it before Christmas.

Employers and other potential lawsuit targets generally prefer binding arbitration because it keeps disputes out of the court system, where juries can inflict damaging verdicts. 

The no-arbitration provision would ban defense contracts worth more than $1 million with companies that seek to enforce or establish binding requirements in employee contracts in certain circumstances. 

The provision covers any requirements that force workers to use arbitration to resolve claims of sexual assault, sexual harassment, assault, battery, infliction of emotional distress, false imprisonment and negligent hiring. 

Heated debate 
Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., who pushed the initiative, said it “allows victims of assault and discrimination their rightful day in court.” 

The agreement and House move Wednesday caps weeks of sometimes heated debate that began in October when the Senate voted 68-30 to adopt Franken's proposal. The 30 Republicans who opposed it — including Sen. John Cornyn of Texas — were instantly the target of barbs from liberal commentators and bloggers accusing them of being rapist sympathizers. 

While liberal commentators were fuming over opposition to the binding arbitration ban, Obama administration officials and Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, raised concerns that it could leave defense contractors vulnerable. 

Some exceptions
In response, House and Senate negotiators narrowed the final language to allow arbitration in cases where the defense secretary or a deputy “personally determines (it) is necessary to avoid harm to national security interests of the United States .” House and Senate members also agreed to limit the scope of companies that would have to comply with the mandate, restricting it to those with federal contracts of $1 million or more. 

Cornyn on Wednesday called the changes “a positive development.” 

Franken said the arbitration proposal was a direct response to Jones' allegations that she was raped by co-workers while in Iraq in 2005. A three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in September that Jones' lawsuit against Houston-based engineering firm KBR and its former parent company, Halliburton, can go to trial, despite language in her 18-page employment contract requiring that such claims be resolved through arbitration. 

However a Houston-based federal judge in 2008 dismissed a similar claim by another woman who claimed she was raped while working for KBR, citing the binding arbitration language in her employment contract. 

Jones has told her story in testimony to Congress and via a Web site for the Jamie Leigh Foundation. The Conroe native has said fellow military contractors drugged and raped her and then held her in a shipping container. 

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