WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer will introduce a bill Thursday that would affirm that presidents do not have immunity for criminal acts, an effort to overturn a landmark Supreme Court decision from last month.
Schumer’s No Kings Act would attempt to invalidate the ruling by declaring that presidents are not immune from criminal law and clarifying that Congress, not the Supreme Court, determines who is subject to federal criminal law.
The court’s conservative majority ruled July 1 that presidents have broad immunity from criminal prosecution for actions taken in the course of their official duties, a decision that cast doubt on the Justice Department’s case against the former Republican president. President Donald Trump for his efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat.
Schumer of New York said Congress has the duty and constitutional authority to review the Supreme Court’s decision.
“Given the dangerous and far-reaching implications of the court’s ruling, legislation would be the fastest and most efficient method to correct the serious precedent set by Trump’s ruling,” he said.
The Senate bill, which has more than two dozen Democratic co-sponsors, comes after Democratic President Joe Biden called on lawmakers earlier this week to ratify a constitutional amendment limiting presidential immunity, along with establishing term limits and an enforceable ethics code for the court’s nine justices. Rep. Joseph Morelle, D-N.Y., recently introduced a constitutional amendment in the House.
The Supreme Court’s decision on immunity stunned Washington and drew a sharp rebuke from the court’s liberal justices, who warned of the dangers to democracy, especially as Trump seeks to return to the White House.
Trump celebrated the decision as a “BIG VICTORY” on his social media platform, and Republicans in Congress rallied behind him. Without GOP support, Schumer’s bill has little chance of passing in the narrowly divided chamber.
Speaking about Biden’s proposal, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said Biden’s proposal would “tear up the Constitution.”
A constitutional amendment would be even harder to pass. Such a resolution would require a two-thirds majority in both the House and Senate, highly unlikely in this era of divided government and ratification by three-quarters of the states. That process could take several years.
Still, Democrats see the proposals as a warning to the court and an attempt to unite their voter base ahead of the presidential election.
Vice President Kamala Harris, who is running against Trump in the November election, said earlier this week that the reforms are needed because “there is a clear crisis of confidence in the Supreme Court.”
The title of Schumer’s bill refers to Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent in the case, in which she said that “in every use of official power, the president is now a king above the law.”
The decision “parodies the principle, at the heart of our Constitution and our system of government, that no one is above the law,” Sotomayor said.
In the ruling, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority that “our constitutional structure of separate powers, the nature of presidential power, entitles a former president to absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his final and exclusive constitutional authority.”
But Roberts insisted that the president is “not above the law.”
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Associated Press editor Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report.
