U.S. — The Supreme Court issued a ruling on April 29 curtailing a key provision of the Voting Rights Act. This decision cleared the way for last-minute redistricting pushes in states such as Louisiana and Tennessee.

Congress has previously acted to address Supreme Court decisions through legislative measures. In 1857, the Supreme Court decided Dred Scott v. Sandford, holding that Dred Scott was not free and that African Americans, whether enslaved or free, were not citizens. The court also ruled the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional. While the Civil War was ongoing, Congress passed the 13th Amendment, which outlawed slavery in the United States and was ratified by December 1865. Confederate General Robert E. Lee admitted defeat in April 1865. In 1866, Congress passed the 14th Amendment, which guarantees citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States and bars states from depriving any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law or denying equal protection of the laws. The 14th Amendment became part of the Constitution in July 1868.

Congress passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) in 1993, in response to the Supreme Court's 1990 ruling in Employment Division v. Smith. That case centered on Alfred Smith and Galen Black, who ingested peyote during a Native American Church ceremony and were subsequently fired from their jobs at a private drug rehabilitation organization. The Employment Division of Oregon's Department of Human Resources denied them unemployment benefits, as applicants fired for work-related misconduct were ineligible in Oregon. Smith and Black sued, contending that the First Amendment barred the state from treating their religious practice as misconduct. They won before both the Oregon Court of Appeals and the Oregon Supreme Court.

The U.S. Supreme Court held in Employment Division v. Smith that Oregon had not violated the First Amendment by enforcing its controlled substances law, which prohibited peyote possession and use. Justice Antonin Scalia wrote the opinion in the case. The court abandoned the compelling interest test, which had previously required the government to show that a law interfering with religious practice served a compelling purpose that could not be achieved through less restrictive means. By the summer of 1990, Congress was considering legislation to restore this test in free-exercise cases. RFRA passed with near-unanimous support in 1993. Lawmakers stated in the text of RFRA that the Smith decision virtually eliminated the requirement that the government justify burdens on religious exercise imposed by laws neutral toward religion. Under RFRA, the government must show that offering a religious exemption to a challenged policy would undermine its purpose. In 1997, the Supreme Court decided City of Boerne v. Flores, holding that RFRA did not apply to state actions.

The 118th Congress, which served from January 3, 2023, to January 3, 2025, enacted 274 laws and cast 362 votes in 2025. This vote count was the second-lowest in the last quarter century. A constitutional amendment proposal requires approval from at least two-thirds of both the House and Senate, and ratification by at least 38 states.