The House quietly approved an amendment to repeal a controversial law tucked into last year’s funding package allowing senators to sue the federal government for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The House on Thursday unanimously approved the amendment by attaching it to the final spending package that must be passed by the Senate next week to avoid a partial government shutdown. The House will send the package to the Senate before leaving town for the rest of the month, essentially jamming the upper chamber to overturn the disputed law — or else they risk a lapse in federal funding on Jan. 30.
The surprise move comes after the Senate added a provision to the shutdown-ending spending bill in November, allowing senators to sue any federal department or agency for seizing phone records without prior notice — with each payment coming out to $500,000 per violation. The language came in direct response to revelations that former special counsel Jack Smith had obtained phone records of eight senators without their knowledge as part of his investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, riot.
The only problem: Senators didn’t notify House members of the provision until it had already passed the upper chamber, effectively jamming the House by forcing them to swallow the provision or keep the government closed.
The House later passed a bill to repeal the language, but that proposal has not been considered by the Senate. Now, the House is using its leverage to turn the tables on their Senate colleagues.
The current law as it was signed would require cellphone service providers to alert Senate offices as well as the Senate sergeant-at-arms if a federal law enforcement official or agency requests the data of a specific senator. The provision only covers senators and does not include language for members of the House.
It also allows senators to retroactively sue a federal agency if their data was “acquired, subpoenaed, searched, accessed, or disclosed” in the past — paving the way for those senators who were targeted in the Jan. 6 probe to file damages against Smith.
Senators can file legal action up to five years after first learning of the violation for any instances that occurred after January 2022. Smith’s subpoenas seizing phone records happened in 2023.
The surprise amendment could cause a stir in the Senate, especially for Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who had already made clear his plans to sue the DOJ and “make it hurt as much as I possibly can so nobody will do this again.”
The Senate must pass the final spending bill before midnight on Jan. 30, after which federal funding for a slew of agencies will lapse. The House is scheduled to be in recess next week.