BOSTON — Two first-year, female lawmakers plan to reintroduce a bill that would require an independent committee to investigate instances of sexual harassment on Beacon Hill.

Rep. Lindsay Sabadosa, D-Northampton, and Sen. Becca Rausch, D-Needham, will file the bill Thursday.

“We think you cannot have leadership investigating leadership,” Sabadosa said. “There needs to be someone independent.”

The bill is being filed at the same time as the House is forming a special legislative committee to investigate an incident in which Rep. Paul McMurtry, D-Dedham, was accused of groping an incoming lawmaker’s backside at an orientation cocktail reception in December.

Under House rules, the Special Committee on Professional Conduct will be made up of lawmakers appointed by the House speaker and minority leader. Sabadosa questioned how that committee can be unbiased.

McMurtry was appointed by House Speaker Robert DeLeo, D-Winthrop, last session as chairman of the House Committee on Personnel and Administration.

“I don’t understand how a committee formed by leadership can investigate one of their own,” Sabadosa said.

The House and Senate have both tightened up their policies around sexual harassment in the wake of the #metoo movement and amid reports of sexual misconduct on Beacon Hill.

Senate President Stan Rosenberg, D-Amherst, resigned last year after an investigation found he had allowed his husband, who was accused of sexually assaulting other men, undue access to Rosenberg’s Senate business.

In the Senate, the Senate Ethics Committee, which is made up of lawmakers, can investigate members, as it did with Rosenberg. Although a special commission recommended broader changes to the Senate’s sexual harassment policies, lawmakers still have not implemented those changes.

In the House, new rules adopted last year create a mechanism for investigating sexual harassment complaints involving the House counsel, an equal employment opportunity officer and the special legislative committee.

Under the state Constitution, only House members can discipline another House member. But theoretically, an independent commission could complete an investigation while still leaving any discipline to members.

Sen. Jamie Eldridge, D-Acton, first introduced a bill last year that would create an independent commission to investigate and report on complaints of workplace harassment in the Legislature. Eldridge envisioned a commission that had subpoena power and could confidentially investigate and recommend disciplinary measures. The bill did not pass.

Sabadosa said she is reintroducing it because, “I need to feel safe, and my aide needs to feel safe.”

She noted that the Legislature is full of complex relationships and power dynamics.

“You can’t have the superiors and the friends of the people who are both the victim and the accused party making these decisions,” Sabadosa said. “You need someone who has no bias, no prior relationships.”

Sabadosa said she thinks it is significant that she and Rausch are just entering their first terms in the Legislature. “I think we’re the ones coming in and saying we’re not accepting this, this is not OK, this is not the environment we signed up to work in,” she said.