House Republican leaders are slamming the brakes on voting rights legislation, insisting that any movement on the issue go through a key Republican committee chairman who opposes the proposal.
House Democrats are pressing hard on GOP leaders to bring the new voter protections directly to the floor.
That would sidestep consideration in the House Judiciary Committee, where Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) has rejected a bipartisan proposal to update the 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA) in the wake of a 2013 Supreme Court decision that gutted a central provision of that law.
Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and other Republican leaders say the bill must go through Judiciary.