2 mothers bring the House to a halt over push to allow proxy voting for new parents

Two moms brought business on the floor of the House of Representatives to a grinding halt on Tuesday over their push to allow remote voting for new parents.

“We said don’t f*** with moms,” Rep. Brittany Pettersen, D-Colo., said on the steps of the U.S. Capitol alongside Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla.

“We worked as a team,” Luna said. “And I think that today is a pretty historical day for the entire conference in showing that the body has decided that parents deserve a voice in Washington and also to the importance of female members having a vote in Washington, D.C.”

Luna and Pettersen have been working to pass legislation that would allow new parents to vote by proxy for 12 weeks around the birth of a new child. Luna tried several different tactics to get the bipartisan bill passed. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., originally refused to put the bill on the floor. So Luna teamed up with Democrats to bypass the speaker and force a vote.

When it became clear they had the 218 votes needed to do that, Johnson still tried to stop them. He took the unusual step of designing a special rule to prevent a vote, but nine Republicans voted alongside Democrats to block it.

Pettersen thanked the Republicans who stood with her and Luna and told reporters she expects more GOP members will support the bill when it eventually comes to the floor.

The GOP lawmakers who voted alongside Luna and Democrats were: Tim Burchett of Tennessee, Mike Lawler and Nick LaLota of New York, Kevin Kiley of California, Max Miller of Ohio, Greg Steube of Florida, Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey and Ryan Mackenzie of Pennsylvania.

“I could not in good conscience vote for an unprecedented rule that would pull the rug out from under Rep. Luna’s discharge petition that got the required signatures fair and square,” said Miller, who had a child just over a year ago. “I cannot imagine a mother, who has spent 9 months going through the wringer, being told that you can’t be with your infant only because you are one of 435 people.”

Johnson says he’ll try again

“It’s a very disappointing result on the floor there,” Johnson said after the vote. “We’ll regroup and come back and we’ll have to do this again.”

By defeating the special rule, Luna and Pettersen temporarily blocked Republican leaders from bringing up other House business, leading Johnson to cancel votes for the rest of the week. That will delay Republican-sponsored bills that would restrict courts from issuing national injunctions and require Americans to prove their citizenship in order to vote.

“The agenda has been taken off the table,” Johnson told NPR on his way out of the Capitol Tuesday afternoon.

Hours before the vote, Johnson argued allowing proxy voting “would do great violence to the institution to reopen Pandora’s box.”

He maintained proxy voting is unconstitutional and said it’s a slippery slope.

“If you allow it for some situations, you’re ultimately going to have to allow it for all,” Johnson said. “And I think that destroys the deliberative nature of the body.”

Luna has been publicly decrying her own leaders and their allies for weeks, saying they were using a mix of threats and bribes to convince members not to support her efforts — including the procedural tool she is using to force a vote, known as a discharge petition.

She resigned her membership in the House Freedom Caucus over the issue, saying her respect for the group was “shattered.”

“A small group among us threatened the Speaker, vowing to halt proceedings indefinitely — regardless of the legislation at stake, including President Trump’s agenda — unless he altered the rules to block my discharge petition,” she wrote in a letter to her colleagues obtained by NPR.

Pettersen, the 13th member of the House to have given birth while serving in Congress, called Luna a “fierce champion on the issue.”

“We’re changing the way that Congress works, making sure that moms and parents have a voice. And I’m just so proud to be a part of this,” she told reporters, holding her nine week-old baby Sam. “I can’t wait to tell him what he’s been a part of.”

NPR’s Claudia Grisales contributed to this report.