IGP Women’s Initiative Panel Explores How International Law Shapes US Response to Domestic Violence

As federal funding for domestic violence prevention shrinks amid broader rollbacks of civil rights protections, a Columbia University panel revisited the landmark case of Jessica Lenahan (Gonzales) v. United States to examine how international human rights standards are shaping US policy and law enforcement responses to abuse.

The roundtable was organized by the Women’s Initiative at the Institute of Global Politics (IGP) and cosponsored by the Human Rights Institute at Columbia Law School, Human Rights, Gender, and Equity Concentration at Columbia SIPA, the Human Rights Institute (HRI), and Center for Gender & Sexuality Law (CGSL) at Columbia Law School.

The event brought together Jessica Lenahan (formerly Jessica Gonzales), the first domestic violence survivor ever to bring a complaint against the United States before an international human rights body, and her former lawyer, Caroline Bettinger-López, now a professor at the University of Miami School of Law. Moderated by Rachel Vogelstein, Director of the IGP Women’s Initiative and associate professor of professional practice at SIPA, the panel traced how Lenahan’s legal fight over police inaction on a restraining order, which reached both the US Supreme Court and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, exposed gaps between laws designed to protect survivors and their enforcement in practice.

“Domestic violence remains one of the most common human rights abuses against women globally,” said Vogelstein, citing estimates that nearly one in three women worldwide experience physical or sexual violence by an intimate partner. While legal and policy responses have expanded in the last three decades, with the number of countries prohibiting violence against women increasing from three in 1995 to more than 100 today, she said “too often these laws go unenforced and justice is not served.”

Lenahan’s case, which began in Castle Rock, Colorado, in 1999, illustrated in stark terms how legal protections against domestic violence can break down in practice. After years of escalating threats from her estranged husband, Simon Gonzales, Lenahan obtained a restraining order requiring him to stay away from the family home. On June 22 of that year, Gonzales abducted their three daughters from the front yard, violating the order.

Lenahan contacted police nine times that day, by phone and in person, and provided officers with the restraining order. Police did not initiate a search, telling her the children were safe with their father. “They were very dismissive of any requests I made, and were belittling me for even asking them for help,” she said. That night, Gonzales arrived at the Castle Rock police station and opened fire. Police shot and killed him, then discovered the bodies of the three girls in his truck.

Lenahan sued the town of Castle Rock, arguing that police failure to act on the restraining order violated her constitutional rights. In 2005, the US Supreme Court ruled in Town of Castle Rock v. Gonzales that she had no constitutional right to police enforcement. “If restraining orders are not enforced,” Lenahan said, “then they’re not worth the paper they’re written on.”

After losing in the Supreme Court, Lenahan brought her case to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, represented by Bettinger-López and a team of Columbia Law School clinic students. She argued that the authorities’ inaction violated her and her daughters’ rights to life, equality and protection. The Commission found the United States responsible for failing to exercise due diligence to protect Lenahan and her children, and recommended legal and policy reforms.

Bettinger-López placed the case alongside a “trilogy” of Supreme Court decisions in which survivors of family or gender-based violence were unable to secure constitutional remedies against either government actors or private individuals, despite statutory protections. She called Lenahan v. United States a “precedential case” because it “directly challenged the US constitutional framework,” highlighting how domestic law can fail survivors even when legal mechanisms like restraining orders are in place. In contrast, the international human rights framework imposes affirmative obligations on states to prevent and respond to private acts of violence when the risk is known or foreseeable. Lenahan’s petition helped advance this framework within the Inter-American system, especially for gender-based violence.

Panelists said that framework underscores why domestic violence must be understood as a human rights issue rather than a private family matter, challenging the longstanding notion that such violence is beyond the reach of government action. “Human rights frameworks can and must respond to domestic violence,” said Tejal Jesrani, director of the Trial Watch Project at the Human Rights Institute, noting that Lenahan’s case demonstrates both the consequences of state inaction and the potential for change “through law, policy, and sustained advocacy that centers survivors voices.”

Bettinger-López, who later served as the White House Advisor on Violence Against Women in the Obama administration and helped develop the first US National Plan to End Gender-Based Violence under the Biden administration, said Lenahan’s case continues to inform debates about government obligations. “How can there be zero accountability when there’s a law on the books and a restraining order in effect?” she asked.

The discussion also addressed current challenges in enforcing human rights norms domestically. Bettinger-López noted that implementation efforts have increasingly shifted toward local governments and non-governmental actors, including the use of international frameworks such as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) as reference points for city and county policies, even though the US has not ratified the treaty. She said this shift requires a change in “mindset,” because much of the advocacy addressing violence against women has traditionally depended on federal funding. “It's a kind of reset moment in a lot of ways,” she said, “prompting us to rethink who's funding this work and who's driving it.”

In closing, Lenahan said her continued advocacy is driven by the belief that public attention to her case still matters. “I know I cannot bring my children back,” she said. “What I can do, however, is be a voice for women who are promised protection in America and then denied it the moment they’re in danger. ” As long as people continue to discuss her case, she added, “it’s still making a difference.”