Did sections of the U.S. Constitution concerning habeas corpus and the powers of Congress disappear from the U.S. Congress website before August 6, 2025? Yes, that's true: Archived versions of the pages recorded the changes that omitted sections 9 and 10 from Article 1. The Library of Congress, which manages the Congressional website, acknowledged the deletions and said it was caused by a "coding error" that would be addressed. The website error has no impact on the Constitution's interpretation or enforcement.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) published on X on August 6, 2025. It opened:
BREAKING: The US government has just removed sections 9 and 10 of Article I of the US Constitution from their website.
It continued:
Note that sections 9 and 10 deal with: - Writ of Habeas Corpus - Congresses ability to control tariffs.
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Source: screenshot of a post by krassenstein on X.com)
The videos from the post showed the name of the website: constitution.congress.gov, also known as the Constitution Annotated section of the U.S. Congress website, the official resource for congressional information.
Congress does not manage the website. Its About page (archived here) reads:
Congress.gov is developed and maintained by the Library of Congress using data originated and owned by the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives.
This is what it looked like at the time of writing:
(Source: screenshot of constitution.congress.gov)
As seen in the screenshot above, two notes were added to the page. One said that the Constitution Annotated website was experiencing "data issues". Another note went on to explain that the missing information was deleted due to a technical mistake and is expected to be restored:
Due to a coding error, some sections of Article 1 are missing on the Constitution Annotated website. We are aware of the issue and working to correct it. We expect this to be resolved soon.
The Library of Congress confirmed this in its post on X (archived here) published on August 6, 2025.
This link shows the preserved contents of the page with the annotated U.S. Constitution, as it appeared on August 6, 2025.
According to Wayback Machine, the deleted content included a substantial portion of Section 8 and all of Sections 9 and 10.
(Source: screenshot of the Constitution annotated website on archive.org)
(click the image to view larger.)
Other saved versions of the page indicated that what was described as a "coding error" appears to have occurred at some point between July 17, 2025, and August 6, 2025, with the entire U.S. Constitution being unavailable on July 21, 2025.
Section 9 (archived here) prohibited Congress from outlawing the importation of slaves into the United States until 1808 or suspending the habeas corpus rights unless there was a rebellion or invasion.
Section 10 (archived here) imposed limitations on states such as making treaties with other countries and imposing tariffs on imports or exports.
Changes to the congressional website have no force of law. The U.S Constitution was ratified in 1789, more than 200 years before the website was created.
