The House of Representatives voted 220-203, with all Democrats in support and all Republicans opposed, Thursday morning to pass a new voting rights bill called the Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act as part of a plan to put the bill on the floor of the Senate for a final showdown over the chambers filibuster rules.

The plan to force a vote on changing Senate rules is the latest development in a one-year odyssey for voting rights legislation that Democrats have been pushing as their top legislative priority. The legislation gained increasing importance for Democrats over the past decade as Republican state legislatures across the country enacted new laws restricting voter access, especially in the last year based on former President Donald Trump s lies about election fraud. In addition, the conservative-packed Supreme Court voted again to gut the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965 in a 2021 ruling.

All three bills put forward by Democrats in 2021 the For the People Act, the Freedom to Vote Act and the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act were aimed at reversing these trends, but they all met the same fate. Republicans blocked the Senate from even holding a debate on each bill by invoking the filibuster, which requires a 60-vote supermajority to overcome.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumers plan to get around the filibuster on voting rights legislation gives Democrats a final put-up-or-shut-up moment. Can Schumer get all 50 members of his caucus to support a change to the Senate filibuster rules to enable voting rights legislation to pass? Or will Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) stick to their long-held positions in support of existing filibuster rules that have made almost every bill subject to a 60-vote threshold in recent years? These questions will likely be answered by Martin Luther King Jr. Day.