U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren and U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley see the Supreme Court's Wednesday ruling upholding a restrictive Arizona voting law undermines the Voting Rights Act and means that Congress must act to expand voter protections, even if it means eliminating the Senate's filibuster.
In a 6-3 ruling Thursday, the Supreme Court upheld two Arizona laws that restrict voter access, one barring third parties from returning mail-in ballots and another allowing election officials to throw out ballots cast in the wrong jurisdiction. The federal appeals court in San Francisco had held that the measures disproportionately affected Black, Hispanic and Native American voters in violation of the Voting Rights Act.
"What today's decision proves is that the courts are not on our side here," Pressley said while appearing on GBH News' Boston Public Radio Thursday afternoon.
Pressley and Warren are pushing for passage of the For the People Act, which supporters say would expand voting rights, limit gerrymandering and add transparency to campaign donations to political groups. Republicans have used the filibuster to block the bill from being debated in the Democrat-controlled Senate.
"This makes it all the more imperative that Congress act," Warren said in a separate BPR appearance Thursday. Warren said she will "fight very publicly" to push the legislation through.
"We have got to abolish the filibuster," Pressley said, referring to efforts by Democrats to do away with the rule requiring 60 votes to move a bill through the Senate. Two moderate Democrats, West Virginia's Sen. Joe Manchin and Arizona's Sen. Kysten Sinema, do not support ending the practice, which has held up the voting rights bill and much of the rest of President Joe Biden's legislative agenda.
Pressley was asked by host Jim Braude about the difficulty of working alongside Republicans who voted not to certify last year's election results and consistently block Democrats' ability to pass laws.
"Yes, I do have plenty of ire for my colleagues who seem to have contempt for the American people or our Constitution, for our very democracy. But Manchin and Sinema are carrying their water, too. And I hope people are paying attention," Pressley said.
Warren said she hopes the court's decision will pressure her colleagues in the Senate to eliminate the filibuster. Warren said it's one thing to debate the filibuster rule in the abstract and another thing to have that debate after Repbublican objections and rulings by the conservative court result in real consequences.
"I am hopeful that as the Republicans make clearer and clearer their position, that they are opposed to any protection of voting rights, that that changes the context in which my colleagues make their decisions," Warren said.
"Or alternatively, that the Republicans have an epiphany. But I think we're in short supply on the epiphany part of this," Warren said.
Warren said she will vote for an infrastructure package as long as it includes support for child and family care, clean energy and climate resiliency work alongside traditional roads and bridge projects. Pressley said a bipartisan agreement already proposed "is simply not enough" and she supports House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's position of "a bold reconciliation package that's going to meet the scale and scope of the crisis that we face."
"The care economy is infrastructure. How are we even debating if climate justice is infrastructure when we have been met with consecutive 100-plus degree days? How could it even be a question that housing is our most critical infrastructure?" Pressley asked.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
