Oregon Republicans flee the Capitol to block gun safety and reproductive justice bills

Repub­li­cans in Ore­gon are once again hold­ing up the busi­ness of the Ore­gon State Leg­is­la­ture by refus­ing to show up for work, which is pre­vent­ing the Sen­ate from tak­ing up crit­i­cal gun safe­ty and repro­duc­tive jus­tice bills:

Most Ore­gon Repub­li­can sen­a­tors on Wednes­day skipped the Senate’s floor ses­sion, bring­ing the upper chamber’s work to a halt with­out the required two-thirds quo­rum as they face votes on the most divi­sive issues of the ses­sion: repro­duc­tive health and gun control.

The walk­out – which Repub­li­can lead­ers called a work stop­page – comes amid frus­tra­tions between minor­i­ty GOP sen­a­tors and Demo­c­ra­t­ic lead­ers over con­tentious issues like firearms reg­u­la­tions, trans­gen­der rights and abor­tion. GOP lead­ers say the move is not tied to any one bill and aims to com­bat an uncon­sti­tu­tion­al process of pass­ing bills that fail to meet legal require­ments for read­able lan­guage that the pub­lic can understand.

What’s real­ly going on here is that Repub­li­cans want to find a way to block bills they don’t like from pass­ing. The non­sense about bills not being read­able is just a pre­text to jus­ti­fy their lat­est walk­out. Weird­ly, due to Ore­gon’s ridicu­lous quo­rum require­ment, Repub­li­cans have the pow­er to block bills if they don’t show up to work, where­as if they are there, they can’t stop the bills from passing.

Walk­out fil­i­busters are not a thing north of the Colum­bia Riv­er, because the quo­rum require­ment is a major­i­ty of leg­is­la­tors — which means Repub­li­cans can’t hold up the busi­ness of the Wash­ing­ton State Capi­tol by flee­ing the Capitol.

But in Ore­gon, the Con­sti­tu­tion says that a quo­rum is much more than a sim­ple major­i­ty. Inex­plic­a­bly, the per­cent­age required to meet quo­rum is two-thirds, which means the few can con­trol the pro­ceed­ings rather than the many:

Arti­cle IV, Sec­tion 12. Quo­rum; fail­ure to effect orga­ni­za­tion. Two thirds of each house shall con­sti­tute a quo­rum to do busi­ness, but a small­er num­ber may meet; adjourn from day to day, and com­pel the atten­dance of absent mem­bers. A quo­rum being in atten­dance, if either house fail to effect an orga­ni­za­tion with­in the first five days there­after, the mem­bers of the house so fail­ing shall be enti­tled to no com­pen­sa­tion from the end of the said five days until an orga­ni­za­tion shall have been effected.

An amend­ment passed by vot­ers last year and sup­port­ed by NPI says leg­is­la­tors with more than ten unex­cused absences become inel­i­gi­ble for reelec­tion, but that still gives Repub­li­cans an oppor­tu­ni­ty to stage walk­out fil­i­busters — albeit of a short­er dura­tion than in the past — with­out incur­ring consequences.

Here’s the text of the amend­ment that passed last year:

Arti­cle IV, Sec­tion 15. Pun­ish­ment and expul­sion of mem­bers. Either house may pun­ish its mem­bers for dis­or­der­ly behav­ior, and may with the con­cur­rence of two thirds, expel a mem­ber; but not a sec­ond time for the same cause. Fail­ure to attend, with­out per­mis­sion or excuse, ten or more leg­isla­tive floor ses­sions called to trans­act busi­ness dur­ing a reg­u­lar or spe­cial leg­isla­tive ses­sion shall be deemed dis­or­der­ly behav­ior and shall dis­qual­i­fy the mem­ber from hold­ing office as a Sen­a­tor or Rep­re­sen­ta­tive for the term fol­low­ing the elec­tion after the member’s cur­rent term is com­plet­ed.

Repub­li­cans have talked about hav­ing at least one mem­ber delib­er­ate­ly vio­late this pro­vi­sion in order to bring a chal­lenge against it — pre­sum­ably under the Unit­ed States Con­sti­tu­tion, since a pro­vi­sion law­ful­ly added to Ore­gon’s con­sti­tu­tion can’t be chal­lenged as uncon­sti­tu­tion­al at the state level.

Repub­li­cans timed their fil­i­buster walk­out to cause as much dis­rup­tion as pos­si­ble and hin­der the busi­ness of Ore­gon’s Legislature.

To put an end to these stalling tac­tics, an amend­ment to alter the quo­rum to a sim­ple major­i­ty will ulti­mate­ly be nec­es­sary. NPI will work with allies in Ore­gon to secure pas­sage of such an amend­ment in the com­ing years.