Sen. Kamala Harris introduced a bipartisan bill Thursday designed to prod states to reform their bail systems, in an attempt to move forward with criminal justice reform as Congress is caught in partisan gridlock over health care and other issues.

The new bill, which Harris co-wrote with Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, a former presidential candidate, would spend $10 million annually for three years on grants for states that reform their bail systems.

Most courts in the U.S. use money bail, requiring defendants who are awaiting trial to stay in jail unless they pay a certain amount of money. Advocates say that hurts poor defendants who haven’t been convicted of any crimes.

Under Harris’ bill — her first major bipartisan legislation — states would be eligible for a grant if they enact reforms such as replacing money bail with systems based on assessing a defendant’s risk to the community, releasing inmates before trial in most cases, or appointing public defenders at the earliest stages of pretrial detention.

“In courtrooms around America, someone is released before their trial based on whether they can afford write a check or not and not necessarily based on whether they present a risk to their community,” Harris said at a criminal justice reform event in D.C. on Tuesday. “That ain’t right. It’s not fair.”

This is Harris’ first major bipartisan bill — a change for a Senator who has been making the biggest waves so far through her strident activism against President Donald Trump and her tough questioning at Senate hearings

As a district attorney in San Francisco, Harris said she saw gangs who would pay bail to get their members out of jail while poor people charged with low-level crimes were stuck behind bars because they couldn’t pay. Because of court backlogs, some less affluent defendants sit in jail for months or years, she said.

There have been moves toward bail reform in several states and cities around the country. San Francisco, for example, uses a computer algorithm to recommend bail amounts based on factors like defendants’ pending charges and past criminal records, which officials say results in fairer bail settings than judges deciding by themselves. Santa Clara County has also implemented a program to reduce pretrial inmates in jail.

But California likely wouldn’t be eligible for a grant under Harris’ bill, at least not yet — a state bail reform proposal was voted down in the state Assembly last month after staunch opposition from the bail bonds industry. The state bill would have changed money bail policies and required counties to create agencies to assess the risk of releasing defendants. Opponents said the bill would be too costly and soft on crime.

A copy of the bill passed the State Senate and is currently in negotiations in the Assembly.

State Assemblyman Rob Bonta, D-Oakland, one of the state bill’s sponsors, said he thought Harris’ legislation would be “a shot in the arm” for the bail reform movement in California. “It shows that this is very much a nonpartisan issue,” Bonta said. “This is a good incentive for forward-thinking, practical policy.”

Bail reform advocates admit that the $10 million grant is basically a drop in the bucket in comparison to what’s needed to fund large-scale bail reform efforts — California’s bail reform bill would cost the state “hundreds of millions of dollars,” an Assembly analysis found. But supporters say the attention that Harris and Paul bring to the issue is important in and of itself. The senators’ bill would also allocate more funding to the overworked Bureau of Justice Statistics to collect more data on pretrial defendants.

Paul has talked for years about reforming the criminal justice system. “Americans should be able to expect fair and equal treatment under the law regardless of how much money is in their pockets or how many connections they have,” he said in a statement.

A former California attorney general, Harris has been making criminal justice reform one of her biggest policy focuses in the Senate. Earlier this month, she met with female inmates at the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla, the largest prison for women in the country. She’s also co-sponsoring legislation that would it easier for women in federal prison to receive health and reproductive care, among other reforms.

When she was Attorney General last year, Harris’ office filed a motion in court arguing California’s bail system was not prejudicial to low-income people. She reversed her position on the issue after being elected to the Senate.

Even as Congress is deeply divided by party, Harris thinks there’s a chance for her bail reform bill — as well as broader justice reform legislation — to pass.

“This is something that should not be thought of as even bipartisan; it should be a nonpartisan issue, and I feel optimistic that we can appeal to people across the aisle,” she told reporters after the Tuesday event.

If the bill did pass Congress, it’s unclear whether President Donald Trump would support it — the White House did not respond to a request for comment Thursday morning. Trump hasn’t said much about the specifics of criminal justice reform policy, but in general he’s described himself as “tough on crime.” Attorney General Jeff Sessions, meanwhile, has directed his prosecutors to push for the toughest sentences possible, undoing the Obama administration’s directives for leniency in some low-level federal drug cases.

Last year, a broader criminal justice reform bill gained bipartisan support in Congress but never came up for a vote in the Senate due to opposition from Sessions and other conservatives.