Seven years later, a coalition of Southern senators filibustered for 60 working days against the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, which offered more robust voting rights protections and banned racial discrimination in public places and in the workplace. Ultimately, the Senate majority cobbled together 71 votes to invoke cloture and pass the bill.
As the use of filibusters grew, so did a movement to reform cloture. Wawro notes that “numerous proposals” were introduced throughout the 1960s to make it easier to end debate. In 1975, after an intense battle, reformers finally succeeded in reducing the cloture threshold to three-fifths—a slightly smaller supermajority that remains the standard today.
The ‘stealth’ filibuster of the modern eraThe turmoil of the civil rights filibusters opened the floodgates for all types of legislation to become subject to filibuster. But with an increasing workload, the Senate began to look for a way to handle filibusters that wouldn’t tie up other legislation. Rather than the stemwinders of the past, the Senate is now plagued by the “stealth” filibuster.
Today, senators can delay or block a bill simply by signaling their intent to filibuster, write legal scholars Catherine Fisk and Erwin Chemerinsky: “A credible threat that 41 senators will refuse to vote for cloture on a bill is enough to keep that bill off the floor.” Instead of risking a protracted debate, the Senate majority often waits to introduce legislation until it has enough support for cloture.
As a result, modern presidents he struggled to pass legislation. Former President Bill Clinton reportedly hoped to eliminate filibusters after they stymied his healthcare initiative. Filibusters he also often held up political appointments—leading both parties to take action. In 2013, Democrats used a procedural tactic called the “nuclear option” to lower the cloture threshold to 51 for confirming lower-level nominees. Although Republicans decried it at the time, four years later they went nuclear too by reducing the confirmation threshold for Supreme Court nominees. (Here's why the Supreme Court has nine justices—and how that could change.)