President Joe Biden on Thursday vetoed a congressional resolution that sought to block a police discipline and accountability bill passed by the D.C. Council, siding with city lawmakers and advocates in a fight over police reform and self-governance only months after he had signed a separate resolution blocking another D.C. bill.

Biden wielded his veto pen on H.J. Res. 42, a measure passed by both the House and Senate that would have repealed the the Comprehensive Policing And Justice Reform Amendment Act, which the council passed on an emergency basis after the 2020 killing of George Floyd by police in Minnesota and sought to make permanent late last year. And he did so on the third anniversary of Floyd’s death.

“The president… vetoed a congressional Republican-led disapproval resolution that would have nullified crucial police reforms, many enacted in the District of Columbia on an emergency basis in 202o after George Floyd’s death, such as banning chokeholds, setting important restrictions on use of force and deadly force, improving access to body-worn camera recording, and requiring officer training on de-escalation and use of force,” said White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre at a press briefing on Thursday afternoon. “The president has repeatedly said we have an obligation to make sure that all people are safe and that public safety depends on public trust.”

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.

“As the first time a president has ever vetoed a disapproval resolution since passage of the Home Rule Act seeking to nullify local D.C. legislation, today’s veto is a historic victory for D.C. residents, home rule, and the cause of local control over local affairs,” tweeted D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton.

The veto wasn’t wholly unexpected; in late March Biden telegraphed it, with the White House saying that while the president did not support every provision in the sweeping bill, he called other parts of it “commonsense.” The White House also said that D.C.’s bill in part mirrored provisions of the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which Democrats passed out of the House in 2021. While the bill did not pass the Senate, Biden said Thursday that he was urging Congress to “enact meaningful police reform and send it to my desk… I will sign it.”

The fate of the D.C. bill, which passed the council unanimously, was quickly wrapped up in national politics this year, when Republicans took control of the House and chose to focus on public safety as an issue. They first took aim at a years-long process to rewrite D.C.’s century-old criminal code, critiquing the proposed revisions as soft on crime. Internal divisions within D.C.’s elected leaders and punishing messaging from Republicans on the revised criminal code led to a lopsided vote in the House and Senate to block it, and Biden signed it.

But despite aggressive lobbying from the police union — which has repeatedly sought to overturn specific discipline provisions of the Comprehensive Policing And Justice Reform Amendment Act, saying they would impact hiring and retention — more Democrats sided with the city, notably in the Senate. Additionally, city leaders were more unified in support of the bill, despite some misgivings Mayor Muriel Bowser said she had with a provision that creates a public database of sustained police misconduct cases.

In a March letter she authored alongside Council Chairman Phil Mendelson, the two officials told House and Senate leaders that blocking the bill — which has been in effect for three years as an emergency measure — “would be disruptive to our public safety processes.”

The debate and legislative sparring over public safety in D.C. is expected to continue in the months to come, both in Congress and in the Wilson Building. Congressional Republicans have held two public hearings on crime in D.C., and in the most recent one, they hinted at some interest in working with Bowser on certain proposals, like increasing funding for local prosecutors in the office of the U.S. Attorney for D.C., which handles violent crime. Bowser has also unveiled her own package of legislative proposals to improve public safety, and is pushing the council to vote on it before their summer recess starts in mid-July. A first public hearing has been scheduled on June 27.

“Thank you [President Biden] for vetoing the disapproval resolution for the District’s Police Accountability Law,” tweeted Mendelson. “This was necessary.”

Biden’s veto isn’t the end of the story, though. Congress could override it, though it would take two-thirds of votes in the House and Senate, more than what critics of the bill would likely be able to pull together.