Harvey Weinstein’s rape conviction was overturned. What does that mean for #MeToo?

Disgraced film producer Harvey Weinstein won a legal victory last week when his 2020 convictions for felony sex crimes, including rape, were overturned by a New York Court of Appeals. But experts say the reversal falls far short of erasing the hard-won progress of recent years, including the passage of hundreds of state laws aimed at gender equity and workplace safety.

Accusations against Mr. Weinstein had accelerated the #MeToo movement, which has focused attention on protecting – and believing – survivors of sexual violence, and on combating workplace harassment.

Even after last week’s legal reversal, experts in workplace safety and culture point to substantive gains that are tough to undo and likely to outlast Mr. Weinstein. Those gains range from societal shifts that empower survivors of sexual assault and misconduct, to legal changes that support workplace safety and gender equality.

“Whether our laws are adequate to address harassment and whether companies are implementing good systems to prevent and respond to harassment, that’s all independent of Harvey Weinstein,” says Elizabeth Tippett, a professor at the University of Oregon School of Law. “The #MeToo movement never really did rise or fall on the one person.”

For many women, the reversal in New York has added weight, given recent restrictions and churning around reproductive health care across the United States. Mr. Weinstein’s victory underscores their concerns on a slate of issues related to women’s agency, safety, and equality. 

Those who saw Mr. Weinstein’s convictions as victories, more broadly, for the rights of women and survivors of sexual assault, have responded to the news with dismay, saying the successful appeal betrays #MeToo’s legacy. Women need to pay attention, they say – and get organized. 

“We have to keep pushing forward,” says Gloria Allred, the women’s rights attorney who represented one of the key prosecution witnesses in Mr. Weinstein’s New York trial. 

The former Hollywood heavyweight is still serving a 16-year sentence for a 2022 rape conviction in California.

How Weinstein verdict was overturned 

Mr. Weinstein’s legal team successfully argued that the New York trial judge had erred in allowing witness testimony about prejudicial acts for which the defendant was not charged. The appeals court also agreed that that testimony should not have been a basis for cross-examination, as allowed by the trial court. Mr. Weinstein chose not to take the stand and face those questions. 

“The synergistic effect of these errors was not harmless,” reads the appeals court opinion. It goes on to say, “The only evidence against defendant was the complainants’ testimony, and the result of the court’s rulings, on the one hand, was to bolster their credibility and diminish defendant’s character before the jury. On the other hand, the threat of a cross-examination highlighting these untested allegations undermined defendant’s right to testify.”

Weinstein attorney Diana Fabi Samson describes the appeal as a matter of black-letter law around evidentiary procedure.

“The rule is simple. You don’t prove that someone commits a crime by proving they have a bad character,” says Ms. Samson, who asserts the ruling does not diminish #MeToo. “The #MeToo movement had a lot of laudable goals, and they still obtain. Women should not be the victim of crimes or even civil wrongs. ... And they should seek vindication in the civil courts where that’s the case, and I don’t think anything about that changes.”

Ms. Allred, for her part, says that despite the setback, women’s rights advocates can move forward – and calls on women to mobilize.

“People speaking out in court of public opinion matters. Legislators hear that,” she says, adding that progress is never a straightforward march. “Nobody ever gives women any rights. ... We always have to fight to win them.”

The reversal comes at a time of significant upheaval in access to reproductive health care as states renegotiate policies around birth control, abortion, and the definition of life.

In the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022, half of states have banned abortion or increased restrictions on it. Several states have passed laws banning abortion even in cases of rape and incest.

The #MeToo influence on state laws and workplaces 

The #MeToo movement sparked a wave of legislation – at the state level more than the federal. Between 2016 and 2022, state legislatures introduced more than 3,000 bills that supported gender equity and workplace safety among other related matters. Lawmakers passed 382 of them. 

Those laws shored up gender equity and workplace safety on a number of fronts: pay equity, requirements for harassment training, procedures for reporting harassment, leave policies, and the elimination of nondisclosure agreements. 

The cultural changes are long-lasting, says Professor Tippett, who tracked and analyzed post-#MeToo workplace legislation with a team of researchers. 

“I don’t think we’re going to go back to a culture where some people think that they can get away with it, and now they can just harass people indefinitely and never face any kind of accountability,” she says.

Other societal gains empower survivors of sexual misconduct and assault with a culture of support. 

High-profile convictions of men like Mr. Weinstein and Bill Cosby, whose criminal case was also overturned, opened the door to people believing survivors, says Terri Boyer, founding director at Villanova University’s Anne Welsh McNulty Institute for Women’s Leadership. 

“That #MeToo piece, the whole purpose of it was to bring the stories to the fore so people understand that it does happen,” she says. “Do people believe that [Mr. Weinstein] did what happened? I think people do. And perhaps that’s the win here, is that people believe it.”