Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton's, D-D.C., bill would extend whistleblower and OSHA protections currently afforded to the executive branch to congressional staff and other agencies' employees Jemal Countess / Getty Images
D.C. lawmaker reintroduces measure to grant whistleblower, OSHA protections to congressional workers
The Congress Leads by Example Act would afford employees of the legislative branch whistleblower and OSHA retaliation protections, along with parental bereavement leave benefits.
Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C., the nation’s capital’s non-voting House lawmaker, last week reintroduced legislation that would grant congressional employees whistleblower protections and an additional form of paid leave.
Employees of the government’s legislative branch — including lawmakers’ staffs, employees of agencies like the Government Accountability Office, Congressional Budget Office and U.S. Capitol Police officers — are covered by the Congressional Accountability Act, which confers abridged workplace protections that federal employees enjoy under laws governing whistleblowers, workplace safety and labor issues.
The Office of Congressional Workplace Rights is the agency tasked with enforcing those various laws. In each of its two most recent biennial reports to Congress, the agency recommended improving whistleblower and Occupational Safety and Health Act protection and enforcement.
“Federal law provides broad employment protection to executive branch employees who disclose information that the whistleblower reasonably believes evidences a violation of law, rules or regulations, or mismanagement, gross waste of funds, abuse of authority or a substantial and specific danger to public health and safety,” the office wrote in December 2022. “There are no analogous protections for legislative branch employees, even those who would raise an issue with a committee of jurisdiction or other appropriate legislative branch official. The lack of statutory protection leaves legislative branch employees who would provide critical information at risk for retaliation.”
The Congress Leads by Example Act (H.R. 9420) would apply some of the Office of Congressional Workplace Rights’ latest recommendations for updating the Congressional Accountability Act to provide whistleblower and OSHA retaliation protections to legislative employees, and grants the office with subpoena authority to investigate alleged OSHA violations. Additionally, the bill would grant congressional workers with parental bereavement leave, in line with the two weeks per year afforded to executive branch employees.
In a statement, Norton said her legislation would continue the work that Congress started in 2018 when it amended the Congressional Accountability Act to update how Congress handles accusations of misconduct and extended protections to unpaid staff and interns, following the #MeToo movement and reports of sexual harassment on Capitol Hill.
“Congress must abide by the laws it imposes on the American people and their workplaces,” she said. “Congress already acknowledged the importance of accountability in the legislative branch workplace when it passed the Congressional Accountability Act of 1995 and further confirmed it when it passed the Congressional Accountability Act of 1995 Reform Act in 2018. As a former chair of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, I take issues of workplace discrimination and abuse very seriously. My bill builds on the protections in previous laws, bringing the protections for legislative branch employees in line with those for other workers.”