The 27th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution bars any law changing the pay of senators and representatives from taking effect until after the next election for the House of Representatives.1Congress.gov. Twenty-Seventh Amendment – Congressional Compensation Congress can still vote itself a raise or a cut whenever it wants. It just can’t collect on the change until voters have had a chance to weigh in.
What the Amendment Says
The full text is a single sentence: “No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened.”1Congress.gov. Twenty-Seventh Amendment – Congressional Compensation
Because House elections happen every two years, the maximum wait between passing a pay change and seeing it take effect is one election cycle. Lawmakers who voted for an unpopular raise have to face the voters first. The rule applies to pay cuts too, though that scenario has never been seriously tested. It also covers both chambers equally, even though only House elections are mentioned. Senators feel a pay change only after House voters have spoken.
What Counts as Congressional Pay
The amendment reaches any law that “varies” what members are paid. Direct changes to base salary are the clearest case. Benefits like health insurance and retirement contributions are generally treated as part of the compensation package and fall inside the waiting period. Operational expenses — travel reimbursements, staff salaries, office supplies — sit outside it, because they exist to help members do their jobs rather than to enrich them personally.
Automatic Cost-of-Living Adjustments
The Ethics Reform Act of 1989 created an automatic annual pay adjustment for members of Congress, calculated using the Employment Cost Index minus half a percentage point.2Congress.gov. H.R.3660 – 101st Congress (1989-1990): Ethics Reform Act of 1989 Courts have upheld these automatic COLAs against 27th Amendment challenges. In Boehner v. Anderson, a federal district court ruled that the adjustments were “lawful in every respect” because the formula was set by a prior Congress and runs automatically, with no sitting member casting a discretionary vote to raise their own pay.3Justia. Boehner v. Anderson A new law changing the COLA formula would still have to survive an intervening election.
Congressional Pay Has Been Frozen Since 2009
In practice, the 27th Amendment has mattered less than you might expect lately, because Congress has not accepted a raise in over fifteen years. The last adjustment took effect in January 2009, a 2.8% increase that brought the base salary for rank-and-file members to $174,000, where it has stayed.4Congress.gov. Salaries of Members of Congress: Recent Actions and Historical Information
Every year since, Congress has blocked its automatic COLA by attaching a provision to an appropriations bill that cancels the scheduled adjustment. No separate vote on the freeze is held; it rides inside a larger spending package. This has happened under both parties, most recently in late 2025.4Congress.gov. Salaries of Members of Congress: Recent Actions and Historical Information The amendment was written to make raises harder; today no member wants to be seen allowing even an inflation adjustment.
The 203-Year Road to Ratification
James Madison drafted the provision as part of the first batch of amendments Congress sent to the states in September 1789. Twelve were proposed; ten were ratified quickly and became the Bill of Rights. The congressional pay amendment was not among them.5United States Senate. Congress Submits the First Constitutional Amendments to the States Only six states had ratified it by 1792, and then it essentially disappeared from public view for nearly two centuries.
The revival started with a bad grade. In 1982, a 19-year-old sophomore named Gregory Watson was taking a government class at the University of Texas at Austin. He wrote a paper arguing the congressional pay amendment was still legally alive because Congress had never set a ratification deadline. His teaching assistant gave him a C. The professor upheld the grade on appeal. Watson responded with a one-man letter-writing campaign to state legislatures.
Maine ratified in 1983. Colorado followed in 1984.6Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum. Constitutional Amendments – Amendment 27 – Financial Compensation for the Congress Public frustration with congressional pay raises built through the rest of the decade, and on May 7, 1992, Michigan became the 38th state to ratify, crossing the three-fourths threshold required by Article V.7Legal Information Institute. Ratification of the Twenty-Seventh Amendment Archivist Don W. Wilson certified the amendment on May 18, 1992. In 2017, 35 years after Watson wrote his paper, his professor changed his grade to an A-plus.
Why the Delay Was Legal
Article V lays out how amendments are proposed and ratified but says nothing about expiration dates.8Constitution Annotated. Congressional Deadlines for Ratification of an Amendment Congress began attaching seven-year ratification windows starting with the Eighteenth Amendment in 1917, but the 1789 proposals carried no such deadline. The Supreme Court held in Coleman v. Miller (1939) that Congress itself makes “the final determination of the question whether, by lapse of time, its proposal of the amendment had lost its vitality.”9Justia. Coleman v. Miller, 307 U.S. 433 (1939) When the 27th crossed the threshold in 1992, both chambers passed concurrent resolutions confirming its validity.
Can Anyone Sue to Enforce It
The 27th Amendment is hard to enforce in court. In Raines v. Byrd (1997), the Supreme Court held that individual members of Congress generally lack standing to sue over institutional injuries, distinguishing personal harm from the kind of “abstract dilution of institutional power” that affects all members equally.10Justia. Raines v. Byrd, 521 U.S. 811 (1997) A lawmaker who votes against a pay raise and loses hasn’t suffered a particularized injury; they just lost a vote.
Ordinary taxpayers face an even steeper climb. Federal courts have generally held that a generalized grievance about how Congress spends money doesn’t create the concrete, personal harm Article III standing requires. The amendment functions more as a structural constraint backed by political pressure than as a judicially enforceable right. The real enforcement mechanism is the one Madison wrote into the text: the ballot box.
Federal Judges Are Covered by a Different Rule
The 27th Amendment applies only to Congress. Federal judges operate under Article III, Section 1, which provides that a judge’s compensation “shall not be diminished during their Continuance in Office.”11Congress.gov. Compensation Clause Doctrine Congress can raise judicial salaries but cannot cut them, even as part of a government-wide reduction. For legislators, the Constitution creates a timing delay as a democratic check. For judges, it imposes an outright floor on pay to protect judicial independence.