During the Rules Committee hearing on the Senate amendment to H.R. 5371, multiple members and witnesses called out a provision in the Senate text that would allow "centers" or Senate offices to bring civil actions and seek statutory damages if certain legislative-branch records were acquired without notice.

Representative Joe Raskin called the provision "one of the most blatantly corrupt" items he had seen and said the language appeared to create retroactive rights to statutory damages of at least $500,000 per violation, with additional statutory triggers that could push the award to $1,000,000 or more in listed circumstances. "It's an ex post facto civil law," Raskin said, adding that the provision favors a tiny class — U.S. senators — and is unlikely to survive constitutional scrutiny.

Republican members expressed concern about government investigators obtaining legislative records without notice to the affected offices and said some remedy is appropriate, but many Republicans argued that including a private cause of action directly in an appropriations/CR measure was inappropriate and risked procedural delay in reopening the government.

Legal and process objections raised in the hearing included potential violations of equal protection (treating senators differently than other citizens or members of the House), the 27th Amendment limits on changing members' compensation and the problem of retroactivity and sovereign-immunity waivers inserted without committee markup. Several members urged a standalone bipartisan fix and cautioned that deleting the language in the Rules Committee could require sending the CR back to the Senate and could delay reopening.

Representative Jason Crow and others asked whether the House could insist the Senate remove the provision before the congressional package moved forward; members discussed procedural options but ultimately voted in committee against rule amendments that would have stripped the language before the House floor vote. Multiple members said they would continue to press the issue on the floor and in public.

Because the provision was a last-minute Senate insertion and because a majority in the Rules Committee voted to report a rule that leaves the provision in place for House consideration, the matter is likely headed to the House floor where further amendments or demands for clarification may follow.