The U.S. Senate could vote as early as next week to block a D.C. police discipline and accountability bill approved by the city’s lawmakers last year, potentially putting Democratic senators in a difficult situation on a politically sensitive vote and testing President Joe Biden’s threat to veto any such move should it get to his desk.

The expected move by the Senate — which is set to coincide with National Police Week — follows a House vote along largely partisan lines last month to block the Comprehensive Policing And Justice Reform Amendment Act, which the D.C. Council first passed on an emergency basis after George Floyd’s murder by police in 2020 and has now moved to make permanent.

The bill requires that body camera footage from police shootings be made public within five days, bans the use of chokeholds, limits the use of tear gas and chemical sprays during protests, removes disciplinary matters from collective bargaining with the D.C. Police Union, creates a public database of sustained police misconduct cases, and strengthens the independent Office of Police Complaints, among other things.

D.C. lawmakers and police-reform advocates have said the bill would impose common-sense transparency and accountability reforms on police, and help strengthen public trust in the Metropolitan Police Department. But critics led by the police union and Republican members of Congress have said the bill has resulted in staffing challenges in the police department and made crime worse in the city as a consequence.

The House measure blocking the city’s bill was sponsored by Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Georgia), who in 2021 compared the Jan. 6 insurrection to a “normal tourist visit” and last year he said that D.C.’s locally run government should be abolished. The companion bill in the Senate was introduced this week by Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio).

“Congress must exert our constitutional authority to keep our nation’s capital safe,” he said in a statement. “It’s a disgrace that the capital of the most powerful nation on earth has become so dangerous, but this sad reality is exactly what we should expect when far-left activists are calling the shots. For the good of every American who lives in or visits this town, I urge my colleagues to support my disapproval motion.”

Because D.C. is not a state, every bill passed by city lawmakers is subject to a congressional review period: 30 days for most bills, and 60 days with anything touching on criminal laws. In this case, though, the Senate’s vote would be happening outside of that 60-day window; the review period formally ended on May 8.

But according to multiple sources on and off Capitol Hill, the Senate Parliamentarian has ruled that the end of the review period does not prevent the Senate from voting on Vance’s resolution to block the D.C. bill under a process that allows any senator to call a vote that requires only a simple majority for passage.

That new interpretation has shocked some advocates for D.C. home rule, who worry that it would dramatically expand the Senate’s ability to block local bills and thus create uncertainty in local policy making. There is already a gap between D.C. and Congress over how to actually count the days in the congressional review period; that gap led to confusion as to when exactly the D.C. police discipline and accountability bill would even become law. (The council said April 21, but the House said May 8.)

Some advocates even question whether the Senate’s vote would be legally valid outside of the congressional review period.

“We are definitely of the opinion that this will have no legal effect whatsoever. It is grandstanding more than anything else,” said Emily Cassometus of the D.C. Justice Lab, a criminal justice reform group. “The review period is over whether you use the council’s count, the House’s count, or the Senate’s count, and the Comprehensive Police and Justice Reform Amendment Act is law in D.C. now.”

In a statement, D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb said he agreed that the Senate’s vote would not be legally binding since it would take place outside of the 60-day congressional review period. “Voting to disapprove of legislation after it has already become law has no legal effect. The effort by Senate Republicans to advance a disapproval resolution now, after the review period has expired, is empty political grandstanding,” he said.

Still, others note that Congress’s power over D.C. is extensive, giving representatives and senators ample opportunities to block or repeal legislation passed by city lawmakers.

Politically, should the Senate vote happen, it would put Democratic senators in the position of deciding whether to side with D.C.’s insistence that it should be allowed to govern itself or the Republican claims that the bill is soft on crime. Earlier this year both the House and Senate voted to block a D.C. bill that revised the city’s century-old criminal code, and dozens of Democratic senators voted alongside their Republican colleagues. Given the narrow Democratic majority in the Senate, it would take only two defections for Vance’s measure to pass.

In a statement this week, the Vera Institute of Justice urged the Senate not to block D.C.’s bill, saying that doing so would “overturn the will of D.C. voters and nullify local progress on police accountability.”

Unlike during the vote on the revised criminal code, the council’s bill has found a powerful backstop in Biden, who in late March said he would veto any congressional measure blocking the bill from taking effect.

“The president believes we should fund the police and give law enforcement the resources they need for effective, accountable, community policing, and at the same time should not weaken penalties for gun crimes,” said White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre at the time. “While he does not support every provision in the D.C. policing bill, he will not support congressional Republicans’ efforts to overturn common sense police reforms.”

The likely congressional action will come the same week that Mayor Muriel Bowser, D.C. Police Robert Contee, and U.S. Attorney for D.C. Matthew Graves are set to testify to a House committee on the city’s efforts to fight crime. Bowser is also expected to unveil a bill that she has said is intended to close gaps in the law to better promote public safety; this week she said one component would be allowing judges to keep more people charged with violent crimes held in jail pending their trials.