The Senate Constitutional Anti-Retaliation Act

If you’re working for a U.S. senator and you think your boss is doing something unconstitutional, you need to be able to say so. If you’re not free to inform the public about it, even by publishing information the senator isn’t willing to release, the voters can’t hold their senator accountable.

And no matter how much public anger you pull down on your senator—even if you deliberately stop him from getting the bills that are most important to him passed—you need to be able to keep your job. If senators retaliated against employees who blow the whistle on constitutional violations, staffers would be too scared to tell the public what their bosses are up to.

So if you want an informed public—if you want to uphold the Constitution—you should support the Senate Constitutional Anti-Retaliation Act!

There is, of course, an argument against it. Senators need their staffs to be on their side. If an employee wants to destroy a senator’s agenda, he should quit. If he doesn’t, the senator may need to fire him, so that he doesn’t have someone in his office working against him. The SCARA would make it a lot harder for senators to organize their offices to get their work done.

Lucky for senators I made it up. I’m pretty sure no such thing exists in reality; if it is, it hasn’t been very effective. Capitol Hill is known for a culture that discourages staffers from publicizing their own opinions.

The Criminal Antitrust Anti-Retaliation Act , however, may soon be a reality. The Senate passed it this week. The CAARA would force private businesses to continue to employ workers who call down the wrath of the federal government for their employers’ suspected violation of the antitrust laws. So if you’re running a business, and one of your employees turns against you over an antitrust issue, you would have to keep employing him—even if that means giving him internal information which he then turns over to the government.

You might say the cases are different because antitrust is the law. But so is the Constitution. The biggest difference is this: Senators chose to work for the people, and the SCARA would help the electorate hold them accountable. Business executives chose to produce wealth for themselves and their investors, but the CAARA would help force them to sacrifice their goals to the government’s priorities .

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