Photo by John Sonderman.

The House Oversight Committee will mark up a bill that would block D.C.’s Death With Dignity bill from becoming a law on Monday, the same night that more than 1,000 Washingtonians are meeting to strategize ways to fight back against an intrusive Congress.

The mark-up over the disapproval resolution was postponed from last week. If passed in the House and Senate and signed by the president within 30 legislative days, it would prevent the District from implementing its medical aid in dying policy, which passed the D.C. Council on an 11-2 vote after more than a year of consideration. It allows physicians to prescribe life-ending drugs to terminally ill patients who have less than six months to live.

“Instead of simply providing end-of-life comfort, D.C.’s new law is poised to do more harm than good,” wrote Congressmen Brad Wenstrup (R-OH), who introduced the disapproval resolution, and Phil Roe (R-TN) in a National Review article.

“Since the Constitution charges Congress with legislative jurisdiction over D.C., Congress has a duty to carefully scrutinize this bill, its impact on medical patients, and its effects on our health-care system. We have weighed the legislation and found it wanting. D.C. residents deserve better,” they wrote.

D.C. politicians argue that members of the House have not spoken to residents or the people who they elected. At a press conference on the Hill last week, D.C. Council Chair Phil Mendelson said that members of Congress will have “none of the input the council had” before marking up the disapproval resolution.

To D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, the disapproval resolution is not about medical aid in dying, but whether D.C. can control its local affairs. “How I feel about the law is irrelevant,” Norton said on the Hill. “My job is to protect the District’s home rule.”

While Congress often dictates policy to the District through amendments in must-pass legislation, disapproval resolutions are far more rare.

As part of the Home Rule Act, D.C. must submit its legislation to Congress for approval. Most of the time, nothing happens and, after 30 legislative days, the bill becomes law. But if the House and Senate both pass a disapproval resolution and it gets signed by the president within that time frame, the bill won’t become law. This has only happened three times since the process was established.

Attempts are becoming more frequent, though. House Oversight Committee Chair Jason Chaffetz tried to use a disapproval resolution to block a District bill that made it illegal to discriminate against people for their reproductive choices in 2015. While his efforts succeeded in the House, the Senate never took up the legislation and the Reproductive Health Non-Discrimination Act is now law. The following year, some House Republicans tried to block funding for the act in an appropriations bill, but were ultimately unsuccessful.

Chaffetz has become a symbol of Capitol Hill meddling in local affairs, with D.C. citizens clogging his phone lines with complaints and constituent services requests, and local politicians openly mocking his intrusion.

Still, his bid to block the Death With Dignity bill looks likely to pass the House, despite Norton saying she would lobby the 24 House Republicans who represent states with similar policies in place: California, Colorado, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington all have statues on the books, and Montana also allows physicians to prescribe life-ending drugs through a state Supreme Court decision.

The goal is to stop the disapproval resolution from passing the Senate and making it to the president’s desk. ““House Republicans are rushing against the clock to abuse congressional authority over the District to overturn a local law,” said Norton in a statement. D.C submitted the bill on January 6, 2017.

She says that, if Republicans have an issue with medical aid in dying, they should pass a federal law rather than target D.C. “D.C. is neither an outlier nor a pioneer on this bill, and it is entitled to the same respect as the six states where medical aid in dying is legal.”