Legislation to codify the rights of same-sex and interracial married couples into US federal law cleared a major procedural hurdle on Wednesday after winning support from some Republican senators.
Senators voted 62-37 Wednesday afternoon to advance the Respect for Marriage Act, surpassing the 60-vote filibuster threshold required to pass most legislation in the upper chamber of Congress. Twelve Republicans joined the Senate’s 50 Democrats to vote in favour of the bill.
The procedural vote sets up final passage as soon as next week. The Democratic-held House of Representatives approved similar legislation by a vote of 267-157 earlier this year.
Democratic leaders have made passing the bill a priority in the “lame duck” session, after last week’s midterms and before a new Congress is sworn in, in early January. Democrats will hold on to control of the Senate but are widely expected to lose control of the House from next year.
Democratic senator Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin teamed up with Republican Susan Collins of Maine to introduce the bill earlier this year after the US Supreme Court ruled in Dobbs vs Jackson Women’s Health Organisation to strike down Roe vs Wade, the landmark 1973 decision that enshrined the constitutional right to an abortion.
In a concurrent opinion to the Dobbs decision, Clarence Thomas, the conservative justice, raised the possibility of overturning other longstanding Supreme Court rulings that protected Americans’ access to contraception as well as the rights of those in same-sex relationships.
“In future cases we should reconsider all of this court’s substantive due process precedents,” Thomas wrote at the time.
The Respect for Marriage Act seeks to gird against any such challenges by requiring the federal government to recognise marriages that have already been granted by states and guarantee that couples are free from discrimination regardless of their “sex, race, ethnicity or national origin”.
Ahead of Wednesday’s vote, Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate majority leader, said the bill would “do so much good for so many people who want nothing more than to live their lives without the fear of discrimination”.
“Passing the Respect for Marriage Act is as personal as it gets for many of us in this chamber, myself included, so we want to get this done as soon as we can,” Schumer added, in a reference to his daughter, who is in a same-sex marriage.
After the bill passes final procedural hurdles in Congress, it will be sent to the desk of president Joe Biden to be signed into law. Biden has long supported same-sex marriage. In 2012, as vice-president, he famously voiced his support for same-sex relationships, breaking with the Obama White House’s previous opposition.