The House voted 357-65-1 on Wednesday to send Rep. Nancy Mace's resolution demanding the release of congressional sexual misconduct records straight to the House Ethics Committee, a referral that effectively kills the effort before it ever sees daylight.
Mace's resolution would have required the Ethics Committee to make public, within 60 days, all reports on file related to investigations into sexual harassment or sexual misconduct involving members of Congress and their staff. Instead, the House chose to bury it in the very committee sitting on those files.
Only 38 Republicans and 27 Democrats voted against the referral, siding with Mace. The rest of the chamber, across both parties, closed ranks.
The resolution arrived amid increasing scrutiny of Rep. Tony Gonzales of Texas, who faces allegations that he had an affair with one of his congressional staffers. That staffer later died in September 2025 after setting herself on fire, The Hill reported.
The Ethics Committee announced Wednesday morning that it had opened an investigation into the allegations against Gonzales. The timing was notable: the announcement came one day after his Texas primary. Gonzales will head to a runoff in May. The Ethics panel is prohibited from taking certain actions within 60 days before an election, which means the committee managed to thread a very convenient procedural needle.
Gonzales has said the accusations are being used as political smears and has stated he will not resign. Mace has called on him to resign or end his reelection campaign.
Shortly before the vote, the Ethics Committee itself came out against the resolution, arguing that public disclosure of its files would damage its investigative work. The committee claimed:
"We believe House Resolution 1072 could have a negative impact on the Committee's ability to investigate and eliminate sexual misconduct in the House. We encourage the House to refer the resolution to the Committee at this time."
The committee further warned that releasing records "could chill victim cooperation and witness participation in ongoing and future investigations."
This is the institutional defense that always wins in Washington. The people tasked with investigating misconduct argued that transparency would make it harder to investigate misconduct, and 357 members found that reasoning perfectly satisfactory. The committee asked the House to send the resolution to the committee. The House obliged. The fox asked for custody of the henhouse inventory list, and the farmer handed it over.
The South Carolina Republican made clear she viewed the vote as a character test for every member who cast one. In a statement Tuesday after she moved to force action on the resolution, Mace laid out her case plainly:
"Staff deserve to come to work without being harassed by their bosses. Women deserve to be safe. And the American people deserve to know when their so-called 'representative' is abusing power instead of serving their constituents. No more hiding. No more excuses. It's time to end the cover-up and drag the truth into the light."
She also directed a clear message to her colleagues before the vote:
"Any Member who votes against this resolution is voting to protect the cover-up instead of the victims."
Three hundred and fifty-seven members made their choice.
What's striking about the vote isn't the outcome. It's the margin. This wasn't a party-line affair where one side could blame the other. Both parties overwhelmingly voted to keep the files sealed. Whatever those Ethics Committee records contain, the institutional consensus is that the public should never see them.
The House added a rule against sexual relationships between members and their staff in 2018, as the Me Too movement swept the country. Congress, as it often does, responded to a cultural moment with a procedural change and then went back to business. The rule exists. The question is what happens when it's broken, and who gets to decide whether the public ever finds out.
Mace pointed out that Gonzales may be "the latest example, but he's not the only one." That's the line that should concern every voter. The Ethics Committee is sitting on an unknown number of cases, and the body it reports to just voted overwhelmingly to let them stay buried.
Rep. Cory Mills of Florida, who has faced scrutiny over his own conduct, voted with Mace against the referral. Beyond that, the coalition willing to demand sunlight was vanishingly small. Sixty-five members out of 423 voted. That's roughly 15 percent of the chamber willing to say the public has a right to know which of its elected officials have been investigated for sexual misconduct.
Mace framed the stakes as simply as anyone could:
"Nobody in Congress gets to play by a different set of rules. We are going to shine a light on every single case this committee has been sitting on."
Whether she gets the chance remains to be seen. The resolution is now in the custody of the very body it targeted, and that body has already told the House exactly what it thinks of the idea.
A congressional staffer is dead. An Ethics investigation was opened with suspiciously convenient timing. A resolution requesting basic transparency was killed by a supermajority of both parties. And the institution that exists to hold members accountable argued, successfully, that accountability would make its job harder.
Congress protects Congress. It always has. Wednesday's vote just put the number on it.
