Senators want to remove Congress’s jury duty exemption
A pair of senators wants to get rid of an exemption that allows lawmakers to skip jury duty.
Sens. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) and Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) have introduced legislation to repeal a provision included in a 1991 spending bill that blocks members of Congress from being required to serve.
{mosads}Both senators suggested that as constituents are required to serve when empaneled on a jury, lawmakers should also have to participate.
“Serving jury duty is a fundamental part of being an American citizen — and yet federal lawmakers are exempted from this responsibility,” McCaskill said in a statement Thursday.
Flake added that constituents are “called to put their busy lives on hold to perform their civic duty and serve on a jury. The law should ask no less of their representatives in Congress.”
Last month, McCaskill caught the media’s attention when she live-tweeted the jury selection process in Missouri last month and was eventually selected for jury duty.
She suggested at the time that she would introduce legislation to get rid of the exemption for Congress. Flake also tweeted about being summoned for jury duty in Arizona in 2014.
Lawmakers can currently choose to participate if called for jury duty. But, according to the 1991 legislation “no elected official of the legislative branch of the United State Government shall be required to serve on a grand or petit jury, convened by any Federal, State or local court, whether such service is requested by judicial summons or by some other means of compulsion.”
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