In-flight sexual assault is a federal felony. It's also chronically underreported, and no single agency tracks it comprehensively. In 2023 alone, the FBI opened 96 investigations into in-flight sexual assault. Agents describe the pattern as strikingly consistent: a dimmed cabin, a woman asleep, a stranger's hands where they don't belong.

Here's what most people don't know: even when a woman does everything right, reports it immediately, involves the FBI, files a claim, the law itself often fails her. Under the international treaty that governs airline liability, a passenger has to prove “bodily injury” to recover anything. In 1991, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that purely psychological injury, trauma with no visible physical wound, doesn't count. That means a woman can walk off a flight with documented PTSD and still be told, legally, that nothing compensable happened to her.

This isn't an accident. The treaty was explicitly built almost a century ago to protect a young, fragile airline industry from liability. That industry is no longer young or fragile. The law hasn't caught up, and Europe is already reconsidering this exact question in its own courts.

We're asking Congress and the Department of Transportation to act now, with domestic protections that don't require waiting on a slow-moving international treaty process:

Recognize diagnosed psychological trauma as compensable injury for incidents on U.S. carriers, treated the same way a physical injury is, not excluded because there's no visible wound.
Close the “no touching” gap. Non-contact sexual misconduct, exposure, indecent acts, should qualify as a compensable incident, whether or not there was physical contact.
Require visible, standardized in-cabin notices stating that sexual misconduct in flight is a federal felony, the same way airlines are required to post no-smoking notices. We've asked airlines to do this voluntarily. They refused.
No woman or family should have to hire a lawyer and fight a treaty just to be taken seriously for something that's already a felony. This should be a basic protection, not a legal battle only the people who can afford it get to fight.

Sign this petition to tell Congress and the DOT: close this gap now.