Reading Room Document

Severability and Duration of Appropriations Rider Concerning Frozen Poultry Regulations

A provision in the Department of Agriculture appropriations legislation for Fiscal Year 1996, providing that a regulation otherwise rendered inoperative could be put into effect if a revised version of the regulation submitted by the Secretary of Agriculture was received and approved by two committees of Congress, violates the constitutional separation of powers by purporting to provide for the legislative enactment of a regulation without bicameral passage and presentment, as required by Article I of the Constitution. This unconstitutional provision is severable from the remainder of the section and statute in which it is contained, so that the section's prohibition against the use of appropriated funds to implement the subject regulation, and its provision that the regulation may not take effect absent authorizing legislation, are both constitutionally enforceable. All provisions of the section, including its prohibition against the regulation taking effect absent future authorizing legislation, are limited in duration to the 1996 Fiscal Year. The OLC does not provide release dates for its opinions, so the release date listed is the date on which the opinion was authored. The original opinion is available at www.justice.gov/file/20021/download.

June 4, 1996