Will Sinema nix filibuster at last?

The U.S. Supreme Court just gave U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema the most compelling reason yet to get rid of the filibuster to pass the voting rights legislation For the People Act.

The 6-3 decision, upholding voting restrictions in Arizona, practically clears the way for the onslaught of Republican-backed restrictive voting rules across the nation.

The only thing that can stop Republicans’ assault on voting access is sweeping federal legislation that’s stuck in Congress because of the Senate’s 60vote filibuster rule that Sinema is stubbornly defending.

She isn’t the only Democrat guarding the Jim Crow era rule, but Arizona is a ground-zero state restricting voting access and she owes it to her constituents.

The court’s new ruling, which has nationwide implications, deals with two voting restrictions in Arizona – the ban on so-called harvesting of ballots and the tossing out of ballots cast at the wrong precinct.

The ballot harvesting law criminalized anyone collecting ballots to deliver to the polling places, a practice that Republicans say was ripe for fraud.

The Democratic National Committee in 2016 sued, challenging the Arizona law, arguing it disproportionally affected minority voters. The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed and struck it down on the grounds that it violated Section 2 of the Civil Rights Act of 1965.

Arizona appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

And now the six conservative justices – John Roberts, Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito – dealt this blow to voting rights access.

The three liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Stephen Breyer, dissented.

What does that tell you? That any future challenge to sweeping voting restrictions have little or no chance with the conservative court.

Why is this so important?

In 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court gutted Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act that allowed nine states, including Arizona, Georgia, Alabama and Virginia to change election laws without federal approval.

Congressional Democrats are pushing for new voting rights legislation that includes restoring federal preclearance requirements on changes to voting practices. Republicans are blocking that legislation in the evenly divided Senate using the filibuster.

Enter Sinema, again.

She’s made it her mission to defend the filibuster rule at all costs despite a rallying cry not just from Arizona but across the nation to get rid of it.

“No need for an insurrection,” said Rep. Ruben Gallego on Twitter. “The courts, the state legislatures and the filibuster will undermine Democracy more.”

Sinema knows that.

But she’s clearly more concerned about protecting an archaic rule to clinch her national celebrity status than listening to the people who elected her in the first place.

Sinema knows that Republicans wouldn’t blink at getting rid of the filibuster if they were in power, and she must certainly understand the broader implications of this court decision.

What more does the senator need to gut the filibuster?