Will America Allow a Filibuster on D.C. Voting Rights?
After 206 years, the Senate is poised to pass S. 1257, the D.C. voting rights bill the House passed in April to give D.C. a voting seat in the House of Representatives. The bill already has a clear majority, but Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has said he opposes the bill. Will McConnell and today’s Republicans filibuster a voting rights bill in the 21st century? For 175 years, filibusters and other opposition denied the District home rule and any congressional representation. Race was the explicit reason. As one senator said, “The Negroes…flocked in…and there was only one way out…to deny…suffrage entirely to every human being in the District.” Congress required segregated public schools and accommodations until the Supreme Court’s Brown decision, where the District’s case was one of the quintet decided in 1954. Congress deprived the District of self government – a mayor and a city council – and ruled the city through three appointed commissioners. Only after the 1965 Vo
