The Library of Congress today said a coding error resulted in deletion of parts of the US Constitution from Congress' website and promised a fix after many Internet users pointed out the missing sections this morning.
"It has been brought to our attention that some sections of Article 1 are missing from the Constitution Annotated (constitution.congress.gov) website," the Library of Congress said today. "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 portions of the Constitution were restored to one part of the website a few hours after the Library of Congress statement and reappeared on a different part of the website another hour or so later. The Constitution Annotated website carried a notice saying it "is currently experiencing data issues. We are working to resolve this issue and regret the inconvenience."
"Upkeep of Constitution Annotated and other digital resources is a critical part of the Library's mission, and we appreciate the feedback that alerted us to the error and allowed us to fix it," the Library of Congress said. We asked the Library of Congress for specific details on the coding error but we received only a statement that did not include specifics.
"Due to a technical error, some sections of Article 1 were temporarily missing on the Constitution Annotated website. This problem has been corrected, and the missing sections have been restored," the statement said.
The deletion happened sometime in the past few weeks, as an Internet Archive capture shows that the text was still on the site until at least July 21. The deletions were being discussed this morning on Reddit and in news articles, with people expressing suspicions based on which parts of the Constitution were missing.
The temporarily deleted sections of Article 1 consist of about 650 words, as can be seen in an Internet Archive version comparison. This included part of Section 8 and all of Sections 9 and 10. One deleted bit contains authorization for Congress to provide and maintain a Navy, and to call forth a "Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions."
Another victim of the temporary deletion was the section on habeas corpus. "The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it," it says. Other deletions included a provision allowing the slave trade to continue until 1808, a prohibition on bills of attainder, and several provisions detailing powers denied to states.
Of course, the Constitution can't be changed by simply deleting passages from a government website, but the error temporarily made it more difficult for people to look up parts of the founding document. On the other hand, most people don't spend a lot of time reading the Constitution, so the attention generated by the incident may result in a net increase in Constitutional reading.
This article was updated at 3:15 pm on 8/6/2025 with a statement from the Library of Congress.
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