I 
116TH CONGRESS 
2D SESSION 
H. R. 8196 
To establish an Interagency Task Force to examine the conditions and experi-
ences of Black women and girls in education, economic development, 
healthcare, labor and employment, housing, justice and civil rights, to 
promote community-based methods for mitigating and addressing harm 
and ensuring accountability, and to study societal effects on Black women 
and girls, and for other purposes. 
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 
SEPTEMBER 11, 2020 
Ms. KELLY of Illinois (for herself, Mr. HURD of Texas, Mrs. WATSON COLE-
MAN, Ms. CLARKE of New York, Ms. BASS, and Mr. FITZPATRICK) intro-
duced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on the Ju-
diciary, and in addition to the Committees on Education and Labor, En-
ergy and Commerce, and Financial Services, for a period to be subse-
quently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such 
provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the committee concerned 
A BILL 
To establish an Interagency Task Force to examine the con-
ditions and experiences of Black women and girls in 
education, economic development, healthcare, labor and 
employment, housing, justice and civil rights, to promote 
community-based methods for mitigating and addressing 
harm and ensuring accountability, and to study societal 
effects on Black women and girls, and for other pur-
poses. 
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Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa-
tives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, 
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. 
This Act may be cited as the ‘‘Protect Black Women 
and Girls Act of 2020’’. 
SEC. 2. FINDINGS. 
Congress finds as follows: 
(1) The United States Commission on Civil 
Rights (USCCR) advises Congress, as well as the 
President and the American public, on ‘‘discrimina-
tion or denials of equal protection of the laws under 
the Constitution of the United States because of 
color, race, religion, sex, age, disability, or national 
origin, or in the administration of justice’’. 
(2) The USCCR routinely has difficulties col-
lecting information from Federal agencies despite 
having the power to take depositions, issue interrog-
atories and subpoenas, and broad authority language 
for the collection of information from Federal agen-
cies. 
(3) The activities mandated herein for the 
USCCR are explicitly authorized by section 3 of the 
Civil Rights Commission Act of 1983 (42 U.S.C. 
1975a). 
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(4) An interagency task force is a task force or-
ganized in collaboration with two or more Federal 
agencies, using government-wide resources, and ex-
pertise to— 
(A) examine a particular problem, issue, or 
event; 
(B) discuss strategies as a collective group 
to address such problem, issue, or event; 
(C) identify programs, policies, and fund-
ing; and 
(D) make recommendations for changes in 
public policy. 
(5) Implicit bias on the basis of race is experi-
enced by all Black people, and demonstrated more 
clearly, in the troubling conditions for Black women 
and girls in our school discipline policies and the 
connections to the school-to-prison pipeline for chil-
dren of color with disabilities. 
(6) Black girls are suspended and expelled from 
school at rates that exceed other girls and all other 
boys except Black boys. 
(7) In studying the conditions of confinement 
for women in prison, Black women are admitted to 
prison at 3.9 times the rate of White women. 
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