Case on filibuster begins in U.S. court

WASHINGTON — A federal judge began hearing arguments Monday in a case about whether Congress is constitutionally required to pass legislation by a simple majority vote and whether the Senate’s filibuster rules violate such a requirement.

The debate over changing the rules of the Senate moved to federal court just blocks from the Capitol on Monday as U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan considered a legal challenge to the chamber’s rules.

Four House Democrats and the advocacy group Common Cause have sued to end the filibuster, calling it an unconstitutional “accident of history” inconsistent with the “principle of majority rule.”

Reps. Keith Ellison, DMinn., Hank Johnson, D-Ga., John Lewis, D-Ga., and Michael H. Michaud, D-Maine are joined by three other challengers whom Common Cause says are being “denied a path to American citizenship” because Republicans have repeatedly filibustered legislation that would grant them an opportunity to apply for it.

Federal courts have tossed similar challenges before. Senate attorneys wrote incourt papers that to take up the case would be to “do what no court has ever done - inject the judicial branch into the Senate’s internal deliberations and usurp the Senate’s power to determine its own rules and procedures.”

During the hearing, Sullivan seemed focused on whether the plaintiffs have any legal standing to challenge Senate filibuster rules, which require 60 votes to end debate on any piece of legislation.