The Senate's ethics committee is recommending that disgraced Sen. Don Meredith be expelled from the upper chamber for engaging in a sexual relationship with a teenage girl.
It's now up to the full Senate to decide whether to accept or reject the recommendation.
Meredith must be given five sitting days in which to respond to the committee report, should he wish, so a vote on his fate can't occur before next Tuesday at the earliest.
The expulsion recommendation follows an explosive report from Senate ethics officer Lyse Ricard earlier this year.
She concluded that Meredith, a 52-year-old, married, Pentecostal minister, had begun a relationship with a 16-year-old girl that later became sexual; she also found that Meredith had abused his position as a senator to take advantage of the teen.
Meredith has called the affair a ``moral failing'' but insists he did not have intercourse with the girl until after she turned 18 and has rejected fellow senators' near-universal demand that he resign.