H.R. 620 Passes the House

Last week, our legislation in the House – H.R. 620 – to curb “drive-by” lawsuits under the Americans with Disabilities Act passed by a vote of 225-192. It was not pretty and we were fighting for individual votes right through the debate on the bill. Our special thanks to so many affiliates who took our grassroots alert and pushed it out again to their memberships.  In three days of action, our members reached 55% of the House of Representatives. Even more important though was the work of several of you and of our key contacts in touching individual members of Congress, especially Republicans who were facing immense pressure from advocates to vote no and needed shoring up. The impact of these efforts was felt in the final vote count.

Several amendments were made to the bill that tightened up language, responded to some concerns being voiced by the opposition, but didn’t undermine the core objectives of the legislation.

Here is the final tally of the vote:

                                   YEAS   NAYS   PRES   NV

REPUBLICAN                213       19                    5

DEMOCRATIC               12         173                  8

TOTALS                       225       192                  13

Democrats voting YES were: Aguilar (CA); Bera (CA); Cooper (TN); Correa (CA); Cuellar (TX); Foster (IL); Peters (CA); Peterson (MN); Rice (NY); Speier (CA); Schrader (OR); Torres (CA);

Republicans voting NO were: Diaz-Balart (FL); Frelinghuysen (NJ); Sensenbrenner Jr. (WI); Smith (NJ); Young (AK); Fortenberry (NE); McMorris Rodgers (WA); Reichert (WA); Roskam (IL); Harper (MS); Lance (NJ); Thompson (PA); Yoder (KS); Barletta (PA); Young (IA); Katko (NY); Costello (PA); Comstock (VA);  Fitzpatrick (PA)

Members NOT VOTING were: Bishop Jr. (D-GA); Cummings (D-MD); Gutierrez [(D-IL); Costa (D-CA); Wasserman Schultz (D-FL); Courtney (D-CT); Deutch (D-FL); Bass (D-CA); LoBiondo (R-NJ); Pearce (R-NM); Rogers (R-KY); Duncan (R-SC); Cheney (R-WY)

With the House consideration now behind us, we turn our focus to the Senate. That will be our target for this issue next month on Lobby Day.