On June 11, Congressman Bobby Scott (D-VA), Ranking Member of the Education and Workforce Committee introduced HR 2728, the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Reauthorization Act of 2015. It picks up on some of the key provisions of a bipartisan Senate version (S 2999) by Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA) and Senate Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI). Like the Senate bill, the House bill would include A three-year phase out of the valid court order (VCO) exception (which enables states to incarcerate youth for behaviors such as truancy and running away from home); require that children who are awaiting trial in criminal court be separated from adult inmates; and require states to collect ethnicity data in addition to data on race.
The bill was co-sponsored by Congresswoman Karen Bass (D-CA), Congressman Cedric Richmond (D-LA), Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX), and Congressman Tony Cardenas (D-CA).