Congress must act in response to outrageous presidential immunity decision

The Supreme Court's decision in Trump v. United States has serious consequences for our democracy, and increases the urgency for passing the Protecting Our Democracy Act, according to testimony CREW submitted to the Senate Committee on the Judiciary for the hearing "When the President Does It, that Means It's Not Illegal": The Supreme Court's Unprecedented Immunity Decision.

Since the founding of our country, there have been constraints placed on the presidency, with a fundamental recognition that the president, and the presidency, is not above the law. However, in Trump v. United States, the Supreme Court issued a deeply divided opinion holding that not only can former presidents never be prosecuted for core aspects of their jobs, but they also have presumed immunity protecting them from prosecution for all official acts. While the Supreme Court did hold that a former president could be prosecuted for private conduct, it took a broad view of what constitutes an official act, making it legally ambiguous to distinguish the two.

For years, CREW has called on Congress to pass comprehensive democracy reform legislation to start reversing America's democratic decline, including passing the Protecting Our Democracy Act. We can no longer ignore the harms caused by the Supreme Court's ahistorical and misguided decision in Trump v. United States. It is up to Congress to act and to legislate in order to mitigate some of those harms. The Protecting Our Democracy Act would strengthen the guardrails of our democracy to prevent abuses of executive power and corruption in the first place by reforming emergency powers, strengthening executive branch oversight and enforcing the emoluments clauses, amongst other reforms.

The time for Congress to act has come. It can and must act swiftly to limit the powers of the presidency and place guardrails against misconduct in order to meaningfully honor our constitutional system of checks and balances and limit anti-democratic behaviors.