Judge weighs in on lawmaker cost-of-living case

Ryan Tarinelli, CQ-Roll Call on May 21, 2026

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WASHINGTON — A federal judge ruled Wednesday that a group of current and former congressional lawmakers are not barred from recovering damages in a case over whether members of Congress are owed back pay for years of suppressed cost-of-living increases.

The lawmakers’ legal team has argued that Congress and the president have violated the 27th Amendment with laws that repeatedly blocked the annual cost-of-living adjustments to lawmaker salaries set out in a 1989 law. Members of Congress last received a pay adjustment in 2009, when their salary was increased 2.8% to $174,000.

The 27th Amendment states that no law “varying” lawmaker compensation “shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened.”

Besides ruling that the lawmakers are not prevented from recovering damages, Judge Eric G. Bruggink of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims found that the 27th Amendment applies to laws that decrease congressional compensation and that laws blocking cost-of-living adjustments are statutes “varying” lawmaker compensation under the amendment.

“Laws varying congressional compensation are ineffective to the extent they seek to effectuate a change in congressional compensation before an election intervenes,” Bruggink wrote in the opinion.

The U.S. government had argued the challenged statutes did not “vary” congressional pay and as such did not implicate the 27th Amendment.

Still, there are other questions that need to be answered in the case, Bruggink wrote in the opinion, including “when an election ‘intervenes’ for purposes of the Amendment.”

The lawsuit is being pursued by Reps. Rick Crawford, R-Ark.; James E. Clyburn, D-S.C.; and Steny H. Hoyer, D-Md., along with former Reps. Rodney L. Davis, R-Ill., and Ed Perlmutter, D-Colo.

The opinion marks a rare ruling on the parameters of the 27th Amendment. At oral arguments earlier this year, the judge made an apparent nod to the weighty constitutional issues at play and said the issue is likely to end up at a higher court.

During a House appropriations markup on Thursday, the ruling caught the attention of Hoyer, one of the plaintiffs, who addressed the committee and read aloud part of the opinion.

Hoyer said it’s not a full decision on the disposition of the case, but a decision nonetheless.

“Seventeen years, I have gotten people from my side and people from the other side saying, ‘Can’t we fix this,’” Hoyer said. “We now have a court decision.”

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