On Friday, President Obama signed into law a groundbreaking piece of legislation that grants basic rights to survivors of sexual assault—one that protects those who come forward to report and bring their cases to court and amends how rape kits are handled in sexual assault cases.

Introduced by Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) in February of 2016, the Sexual Assault Survivors’ Rights Act focused heavily on revising how the medical exams that sexual assault survivors undergo to gather forensic evidence—more commonly known as rape kits—are handled in federal criminal cases. The kits are notorious for being backlogged and frequently go untested or are destroyed before they can be processed. In drafting the bill, Senator Shaheen worked closely with Amanda Nguyen, a 24-year-old woman who, after struggling to prevent her own rape kit from being destroyed by the state of Massachusetts, founded Rise, an organization dedicated to protecting the legal rights of sexual assault survivors.

The legislation ensures that survivors of sexual assault in federal criminal cases have the right to undergo such forensic evidence collection without being charged by law enforcement. Survivors must be informed of any test results associated with their rape kits, and the the kits must be preserved for a state's maximum statute of limitations (or for up to 20 years). Additionally, survivors must be notified, in writing, 60 days prior to their kit's intended destruction and can request its preservation beyond the scheduled date.

After the bill was introduced earlier this year—and co-sponsored by Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Patrick Leahy (D-VT)—the Senate voted unanimously in favor of its passage. A counterpart piece of legislation, renamed the Survivors' Bill of Rights Act of 2016, was then introduced to the House by Representatives Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), Mimi Walters (R-CA), and Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), where it passed unanimously in early September. After several minor changes were made between the two bills to consolidate them, the Survivors' Bill of Rights Act of 2016 passed unanimously in the Senate in late September and was then sent to the president's desk to be signed into law.

In a statement to Glamour about the passage of the historic bill, Senator Shaheen said: