Biden signs FY2022 NDAA enacting comprehensive military justice overhaul

President Biden signs the Fiscal Year 2022 National Defense Authorization Act, which includes landmark military justice reforms that remove sexual assault and sexual harassment cases from the chain of command and place them under independent military prosecutors. The change, championed for years by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand and military sexual assault survivors, ends a decades-long system in which commanding officers had authority over whether to prosecute such cases. The bill passed with large bipartisan majorities. The Pentagon is given until January 2023 to implement the new system.