House’s Rush to Expulsions Overruns Due Process. Is That So Bad?

It’s very, very difficult to get kicked out of the House of Representatives.

Before the made-for-Bravo ouster of ex-Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) in 2023, the House hadn’t expelled a member in two decades. The chamber has removed just six lawmakers in 237 years of congressional history, half of them over fighting for the Confederacy during the Civil War. Expulsion requires a two-thirds majority and thus has an almost prohibitively high bar.

But this week, lawmakers are seriously discussing expelling four of their own, including two over similar allegations of sexual misconduct with congressional staff. Expelling Reps. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) and Tony Gonzales (R-Texas) would allow lawmakers to hold them accountable without changing the House’s razor-thin balance of power.

But the precedent set by the success or failure of the bipartisan push could chart a very different course for the next two centuries of Congress. That’s because the House Ethics Committee hasn’t fully investigated, issued a report, or held trials regarding either lawmaker.

All this is happening while House Ethics conducts rare public hearings over allegations that Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (D-Fla.) mishandled federal funds, among other financial crimes she denies. The panel announced an investigation of Swalwell today, and it’s also probing Rep. Cory Mills (R-Fla.) for alleged fraud and violence against women. Resolutions to expel them could arise this week, though some members want to see the House Ethics process play out first.

The whole mess raises a number of questions — namely, what does due process look like in the House, and who gets it?

The allegations against Gonzales are old news at this point. The married Texas congressman admitted to having an affair with an aide, who later died by suicide, early last month after rampant speculation. He ended his reelection bid, though only under widespread GOP pressure and after it became clear he might lose his runoff. The House had seemingly moved on to the next news cycle, even as numerous reported text messages showed Gonzales initiating sexual conversations with another staffer.

Then, a barrage of sexual misconduct allegations came to light against Swalwell — who until very recently was seen as a frontrunner to become California’s next governor. The Democrat is accused not just of harassment, but of raping a former staffer. Swalwell denied “the serious, false allegations” in a statement terminating his gubernatorial campaign, though he also said he was “deeply sorry for mistakes in judgment I’ve made in my past.”

The diverse coalition condemning both Gonzales and Swalwell is made up of familiar faces — including multiple GOP women who bucked their party by leading the charge to release files related to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. The connection is clear; some of the furthest-right and -left lawmakers have found common ground in rooting out sexual corruption in Washington.

On one hand, this broader push could be seen as something of a congressional #MeToo movement, almost a decade after the hashtag resounded through workplaces and, to a degree, the US government. The House formally banned relationships between lawmakers and staffers in 2018, in part as a reaction to #MeToo.

Real consequences, though, have been scant. No House member has ever been expelled for sexual misconduct. Only two have been reprimanded — both in the 1980s, and both for allegations involving House pages. The now-defunct page program hosted high school students to work in the chamber. Reps. Dan Crane (R-Ill.) and Gerry Studds (D-Mass.) were censured, a punishment akin to a slap on the wrist, and Studds went on to serve 14 more years.

Expelling Swalwell and Gonzales would open the door to more such expulsions without input from the Ethics Committee. That could be a slippery slope, and the House would very likely break from its six-expulsions-in-200-plus-years status quo.

Of course, the status quo has, for centuries, protected lawmakers from real consequences for sexual misconduct. And the often-secretive House Ethics panel moves notoriously slowly. Before last month it hadn’t held a public hearing in over a decade.

So maybe the precedent that affairs between lawmakers and their aides would be grounds for expulsion would be a net positive, even if it goes against historical process. Surely the line needs to be drawn somewhere — the House can’t resort to knee-jerk expulsions, based simply on one-off allegations — but both Swalwell and Gonzales have a deep well of evidence against them.

If breaches of House rules and generally understood ethical standards aren’t enough to discourage sexual harassment or even assault, perhaps the threat of a public firing could do the job.