About the NPO Initiative
Why This Exists
Protective orders are among the most consequential legal tools available to survivors of domestic and intimate partner violence. They carry the authority of the court. They can create distance, protect children, and provide a legal basis for enforcement. But their force is contingent. A remedy that exists on paper but cannot be accessed in practice offers something closer to the appearance of protection than protection itself.
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This Initiative proceeds from the conviction that procedural inaccessibility is a structural failure with real consequences for real people. Dense statutory language, fragmented court procedures, and the absence of plain-language guidance function, in effect, as barriers to safety.
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Protective orders are formally available in every state. But formal availability is not the same as meaningful access. Statutory eligibility standards differ across jurisdictions. Filing procedures vary. Emergency relief operates through different legal frameworks and timelines. And the resources necessary to understand and navigate these systems, including attorneys, legal aid organizations, and court self-help centers, are unevenly distributed and, in many communities, severely strained.
This project addresses that problem by building state-specific, legally grounded explanations of how protection order law actually operates, written for the people who need to use it rather than merely about them.
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What Each State Guide Contains
Each guide is organized around the governing law of its jurisdiction. The coverage is consistent across states and includes eligibility requirements and qualifying relationships, the forms of relief a court may grant, standard and emergency filing procedures, expected timelines from filing through hearing, enforcement mechanisms, and the consequences of violations, and guidance on modification and renewal. The language throughout is designed to remain precise without becoming impenetrable.
How It Is Built
The Initiative is developed with the involvement of a nationwide network of attorneys, legal scholars, policy specialists, and domestic violence advocates. Each state guide reflects the contribution of at least one practitioner or expert with direct familiarity with the law of that jurisdiction.
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A Note on This Resource
This website provides general legal information. It does not constitute legal advice and does not create an attorney-client relationship. Laws change, and legal outcomes depend on the specific facts of individual cases. Users are strongly encouraged to consult a qualified attorney or local advocate whenever one is available.
About Felicity Wong
Felicity Wong is a first-year student at Harvard College. The National Protection Orders Initiative reflects a question that has shaped much of her work so far: how meaningful a legal remedy remains when the people it is meant to protect cannot readily identify, understand, or use it. Her interest in protection order law grows from that concern. She is particularly attentive to how procedural complexity and informational barriers can narrow access to legal protection long before a court rules on the merits.
At Harvard, she serves as an editor of the Harvard Undergraduate Law Review and the Harvard Political Review. Across that work, she has been drawn to the gap between legal framework and legal reality, especially in contexts where formal rights depend for their value on whether ordinary people can navigate the institutions that govern them. This Initiative is an extension of that concern. It is built on the view that legal protection is not fully realized when it exists only at the level of doctrine and remains difficult to reach in practice.
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She is also involved in Harvard Global Women’s Empowerment, the Harvard College Debating Union, and the Institute of Politics Fellows Program. Those commitments have reinforced her interest in the relationship between legal structure and lived consequence. The Initiative reflects that broader orientation by treating legal clarity as part of the conditions under which protection becomes genuinely available.