Last Updated on June 30, 2022
President Biden called for Senate filibuster rules to be suspended so that Democrats can codify Roe V. Wade with a simple majority.
“I believe we have to codify Roe v. Wade in the law and the way to do that is to make sure that Congress votes to do that, and if the filibuster gets in the way, it’s like voting rights, it should be ‘we provide an exception for this’ — require an exception to the filibuster for this action to deal with the Supreme Court decision,” Biden said during a press conference at the NATO summit in Spain.
Joe Biden calls for eliminating the filibuster to legalize abortion nationwide until the moment of birth. pic.twitter.com/okoVAdgA8R
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) June 30, 2022
Biden has previously been opposed to bypassing the filibuster. An increasing number of elected Democrats have called for the rule to be tossed entirely, however.
Others, including Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Ed Markey (D-MA) and Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) have called for President Biden to add more justices to the Supreme Court. “We cannot have a right-wing court run America. How that changes, we’ll see,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY).
“We need to repeal the filibuster so that we can expand the Supreme Court to reclaim the two stolen seats on a now illegitimate court, which are stealing the rights of the American people,” Markey said at a recent event.
Biden has resisted calls to expand the Supreme Court, at least for now.
Despite Biden’s wishes, Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema has said in the past that she does not support lowering the filibuster threshold for voting rights legislation. Joe Manchin (D-WV) has said that he supports codifying Roe V. Wade, but he has also thrown cold water on filibuster proposals.