LINCOLN- After a small minority of Nebraska senators reaffirmed their support for derailing the legislative session on Tuesday, a frustrated majority group motioned to change the Legislature's rules to set new limits on motions that might slow the passage of bills. Sen. Erdman, who introduced the motion, secured a 31-13 vote to pass the new rules, restricting how often senators can seek to pause debate, send a bill back to committee, or indefinitely postpone a bill.

"I think this rule change is a fair rule change so we can have full and fair debate on the bills as presented," Erdman told his colleagues, "Listen to who is in opposition, and you can quickly conclude why we've wasted 50 days." Despite the rule change, State Sens. Megan Hunt, Machaela Cavanaugh, and Danielle Conrad, promised to still attempt to bring the Legislature to a halt. By the end of the day on Wednesday, they had filed 742 motions on bills that had come out of committee.

"We are blowing up this session," said Hunt during the debate, "The session is over, and it's on your terms. The terms were made clear to you for the last four to six weeks. Hating trans kids is more important to you than the rest of the session...Human rights are hanging by a thread." Several senators in the Republican majority expressed frustration over the continued filibuster, including Sen. Lou Ann Linehan, who said that she was unhappy to see Democrats keep 30 of her colleagues from speaking on the microphone.

Former state Sen. Ernie Chambers criticized the rule change on Tuesday night, saying, "What this does is to undermine the integrity of the legislature as the body that represents the people." Senators in support of the change believe it will speed up debate, but Chambers insisted that it would have the opposite effect. "It will create a logjam and the subject matter of a particular bill will not be important, it now becomes a battle of power," he said. Former Sen. Chambers also stated that the change, if he were still a member of the Legislature, would not have stopped him from filibustering.

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