Opinion ID: 165324
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Congressional Accountability Act

Text: 2 The CAA, 2 U.S.C. § 1301 et seq., extends the protections of 11 major workplace statutes to congressional employees. See § 1302(a)(1)-(11). It creates the Office of Compliance (OOC), an independent office within the legislative branch. See id. § 1381. The OOC has a five-member Board of Directors, appointed jointly by the Speaker of the House, the Senate Majority Leader, and the Senate and House Minority Leaders. See id. § 1381(b). In addition to promulgating rules for implementation of the eleven statutes, the OOC oversees a complaint procedure that provides for counseling, mediation, formal hearings and decisions by a hearing officer, and appeal to the Board of Directors. James J. Brudney, Congressional Accountability and Denial: Speech or Debate Clause and Conflict of Interest Challenges to Unionization of Congressional Employees, 36 Harv. J. Legis. 1, 9 (1999). See generally Sandra Mazliah, The Congressional Accountability Act of 1995: Meandering the Mandatory Administrative Maze, 6 Fed. Cir. B.J. 5 (1996). The CAA provides for judicial review, see 2 U.S.C. § 1407, and it allows plaintiffs to opt out of some Board proceedings and instead file suit in federal district court. See id. §§ 1404, 1408; Brudney, supra, at 9-10. 3 Under the CAA a plaintiff may file a complaint only against the employing office, not the individual member of Congress. See 2 U.S.C. §§ 1405(a) & 1408(b). The Office of House Employment Counsel, see id. § 1408(d), or the Senate Chief Counsel for Employment represents the office, Brudney, supra, at 10 n. 46; and damages are paid from funds appropriated into the OOC's Treasury account. See § 1415(a). Of particular relevance to our case, the CAA explicitly retains Speech or Debate Clause immunity for members of Congress, see § 1413, thereby avoiding any issue regarding whether Congress as a whole can waive such immunity for individual members.