Parts of the US Constitution mysteriously vanished from Congress’s official website this week, erasing some civil liberties and reigniting public distrust.
Parts of the US Constitution vanished from Congress’s official website only to be restored hours later.
The Library of Congress confirmed on Wednesday that a “coding error” caused several sections of Article I of the Constitution to vanish from constitution.congress.gov, the site that hosts the official Constitution Annotated project.
The missing text included roughly 650 words from Section 8, and all of Sections 9 and 10. These sections are key parts of the founding document that outline Congressional powers and limits.
Among the temporarily erased content was Congress’s authority to raise a navy and suppress insurrections, the right to habeas corpus, and restrictions on state powers.
Missing sections included the clause that permitted the slave trade until 1808, a ban on bills of attainder, and several key limits on the powers granted to individual states.
Attack on civil rights?
Some users on the internet pointed out the eerie coincidence that the vanished text dealt with core civil liberties and federal limits, prompting speculation that maybe it was done on purpose.
“It’s not a fuck up. It’s deliberate. The website has been up for many years. The only reason to adjust the site is to deliberately edit it,” wrote one Redditor.
While the incident didn’t change any laws and the Constitution itself obviously remains intact, it underscores vulnerability in how foundational documents are stored and accessed digitally. Access to these vital texts is crucial for a democratic society, as civic literacy depends not only on laws but also on the servers that host them.
“The government is already acting like those sections don’t exist – we’re being asked to think about the reality of how they’re operating, like they no longer exist, rather than pretending because the words still exist were all safe and protected by them,”
responded another user.
Another Redditor pointed out that the Congress page is one of the first links that appear in most search engines when people search for the Constitution. It currently presents users with incomplete versions of the Constitution that explicitly exclude portions pertinent to the current administration's actions and rhetoric.
“Unfortunately, we are past the stage where the current administration and his MAGA congress deserve the benefit of the doubt,” the Reddit user said.
“This is exactly the childish, self-serving, denialism that this administration actively engages in, be it with climate data, historic profiles of influential black Americans, or anything that appears on a whim.”
Other Redditors disagreed, saying that if it was done on purpose, other parts should have been deleted, not the ones missing.
“Coding error” deleted parts of the Constitution
The Library of Congress confirmed on Wednesday that a “coding error” was to blame for the incident.
“It has been brought to our attention that some sections of Article 1 are missing from the Constitution Annotated website,” the Library wrote on the BlueSky platform.
“We’ve learned that this is due to a coding error. We have been working to correct this and expect it to be resolved soon.The missing text had been restored in one section of the site. A notice posted to the Constitution Annotated homepage warned of ongoing “data issues” but reassured users that repairs were in progress.
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