(WASHINGTON) — The House voted on Tuesday to reject a rule that would have blocked Rep. Anna Paulina Luna’s bipartisan discharge petition to allow proxy voting for new lawmaker parents up to 12 weeks after giving birth.
Nine Republicans joined with Democrats to vote against the joint “rule” — a procedural maneuver to advance legislation — which said the discharge petition by Luna, a hard-line Republican, and other similar bills that would address proxy voting are out of order.
House Republican leaders had said they would take the unprecedented step to block Luna’s petition — the latest move in a weekslong internal House GOP clash.
Luna’s legislation seeks to allow new mothers and fathers in the House to vote on legislation remotely. Luna had a child in 2023 as she was serving in Congress.
Democratic Reps. Brittany Pettersen and Sara Jacobs introduced the effort with Luna and Republican Rep. Michael Lawler in January.
“I am doing this because I believe this governing body needs to change for the better and young American parents need to be heard in the halls of Congress,” Luna said last week.
Pettersen spoke in favor of Luna’s resolution on Tuesday as she held her 9-week-old son, Sam.
As Sam cooed, squealed, squeaked and cried in his mother’s arms, Pettersen — with a burp cloth slung over her shoulder — pleaded for bipartisan cooperation to “modernize Congress” and address life events for lawmakers.
“No mom or dad should be in the position that I was in and so many parents have found themselves in. It is anti-woman, it’s anti-family and we need to come together,” she said on the House floor.
Pettersen is only the 13th member of the House to have given birth while serving in Congress — and returning to Washington after her son was born prematurely meant she “faced an impossible decision.”
“We have a long ways to go to make this place accessible for young families like mine,” Pettersen said. “For all of the parents here, we know that when we have newborns, it’s when they’re the most vulnerable in their life. It’s when they need 24-7 care.”
The extraordinary move from GOP leaders to block the legislation comes after Luna received 218 signatures on her resolution — enough needed to force the House to vote on the measure. Lawmakers use discharge petitions to circumvent leadership, who determine what legislation comes to the floor.
Speaker Mike Johnson and Luna have been at odds over proxy voting for new parents. The speaker has argued the effort is unconstitutional and made his case during the closed GOP conference meeting Tuesday morning, sources told ABC News.
Johnson has argued that proxy voting is the start of a slippery slope that could lead to more and more members voting remotely. Proxy voting was used during the COVID-19 pandemic, which many Republicans were against.
“I believe it’s unconstitutional. I believe it violates more than two centuries of tradition in the institution, and I think that it opens a Pandora’s box where, ultimately, maybe no one is here, and we’re all voting remotely by AI or something. I don’t know. I don’t think that’s what Congress is supposed to be,” Johnson said at a news conference last week.
Despite some Republican support for the bill, Johnson said “as the leader of this institution and the one who’s supposed to protect it, I don’t feel like I can get on board with that.”
“This is a deliberative body. You cannot deliberate with your colleagues if you’re out somewhere else. Now, there are family circumstances that make it difficult for people to attend votes. I understand that. I’ve had them myself,” he said.
Luna said in a post on X Tuesday that she asked that the legislation just cover new moms to vote by proxy “and they still said no.”
“The argument here is no longer making sense,” Luna wrote. “They say it is unconstitutional yet they voted by proxy.”
House Democratic Caucus Chairman Pete Aguilar declared that it’s time for Republicans to stop with the “pro-family” lecturing.
“Republicans should stop lecturing people on being pro-family when they’re opposing this uniformly,” he said at the party’s weekly press conference on Tuesday.
Aguilar praised Rep. Pettersen for working across the aisle with Luna as Republican leadership has fumed about the bipartisan effort.
“It’s shameful and terrible. Our members will oppose these efforts, our hope is reasonable Republicans who have worked with us on these issues will oppose effort too,” Aguilar said about the discharge petition block. “It’s clear that Speaker Johnson is doing everything he can to undermine the will of the House. The majority of the members in the House of Representatives would support this legislation.”
The vote comes a day after Luna resigned from the ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus over her legislation, according to a letter obtained by ABC News.
“With a heavy heart, I am resigning from the Freedom Caucus. I cannot remain part of a caucus where a select few operate outside its guidelines, misuse its name, broker backroom deals that undermine its core values and where the lines of compromise and transaction are blurred, disparage me to the press, and encourage misrepresentation of me to the American people,” she wrote in the letter.
ABC News’ Lalee Ibssa contributed to this report.
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