Federal agencies write the detailed rules that carry out the laws Congress passes — and those rules can run to hundreds of pages that Congress never votes on directly. The Congressional Review Act is the tool that lets Congress reach back into that process and cancel a rule outright. It works through a joint resolution of disapproval that moves on a fast track in the Senate, and if it is signed into law it wipes the rule off the books. This guide explains the mechanism, the deadlines, the one-time procedural advantages it carries, and the reason it usually only succeeds when Congress and the President are aligned.
What does the Congressional Review Act do?
The Congressional Review Act, enacted in 1996 and codified at 5 U.S.C. sections 801 through 808, requires federal agencies to submit their rules to both chambers of Congress and to the Government Accountability Office before the rules take effect. It then gives Congress a defined window to disapprove a rule using an expedited procedure. If a joint resolution of disapproval passes both chambers and is signed by the President, the rule "shall have no force or effect."
What is a joint resolution of disapproval?
A joint resolution of disapproval is the specific vehicle the Act requires. Its operative text is fixed by statute — it must read: "That Congress disapproves the rule submitted by the ___ relating to ___, and such rule shall have no force or effect," with the blanks filled in with the agency name and the rule's title. Because it is a joint resolution, it follows the same path as a bill: both chambers must pass identical text and the President must sign it (or Congress must override a veto) for it to become law. For how that measure type works generally, see our guide on reading a bill's number and on joint versus concurrent resolutions.
How long does Congress have? The lookback window
The Act runs on deadlines tied to when an agency submits a rule. To qualify for the Senate's fast-track procedure, the Senate must act within a period of 60 days of Senate session after the rule is received and published. There is also a "lookback" mechanism: if an agency submits a rule near the end of a session — within 60 session or legislative days of Congress adjourning — the review clock resets and starts over in the next session, with the renewed period beginning on the 15th day of session in the Senate and the 15th legislative day in the House.
The practical effect of the lookback is that rules issued late in one Congress can remain subject to disapproval well into the next one. This is why the Act is used most heavily at the start of a new administration, when a newly seated Congress and President can review rules finalized in the final months of the prior administration.
Why can't the Senate filibuster a disapproval resolution?
The Act's central procedural feature is that it strips the Senate's usual delay tools from a qualifying disapproval resolution. A CRA joint resolution of disapproval cannot be filibustered, and it passes on a simple majority rather than the 60 votes that cloture normally requires. The expedited path has specific steps: after a 20-calendar-day period following the rule's submission, a petition signed by 30 senators can discharge the committee from further consideration. Once the committee is discharged or the resolution is reported, any senator can make a nondebatable motion to proceed. Debate is then limited to a maximum of 10 hours, and no amendments are allowed.
These advantages apply only in the Senate. The House has no comparable expedited procedure under the Act; there, a disapproval resolution is brought to the floor under a special rule from the Rules Committee, like other legislation. And because a Senate-passed resolution is not referred to a House committee, House supporters cannot use a discharge petition to force one to the floor.
The "substantially the same" bar
Disapproval under the Act does more than cancel the specific rule. Under 5 U.S.C. 801(b)(2), once a rule is disapproved, the agency may not reissue it "in substantially the same form" — or issue a new rule that is substantially the same — unless a later law specifically authorizes it. The statute does not define what "substantially the same" means, which leaves the boundary of the bar unsettled. The consequence is real, though: an agency cannot simply repackage a disapproved rule and try again without new authority from Congress.
Why does the President usually have to be aligned?
Because a disapproval resolution requires the President's signature, the arithmetic favors success only in a narrow circumstance. When the rule being challenged comes from the sitting President's own administration, that President would ordinarily veto a resolution striking it down, and overriding a veto requires a two-thirds vote in both chambers — a threshold rarely reached. As a practical matter, the Act tends to produce enacted disapprovals when a new President is willing to sign resolutions cancelling a predecessor's late-term rules. Outside that window, a disapproval resolution can still pass Congress, but it faces the same veto math as any other bill the President opposes. For the underlying veto mechanics, see our guide on the presidential veto.
A worked example: H.J.Res. 140 and the Boundary Waters
LegislationPatch analyzed a completed CRA disapproval in the 119th Congress. H.J.Res. 140, signed into law on April 27, 2026, used the Act to cancel the Bureau of Land Management's Public Land Order No. 7917, which had withdrawn 225,504 acres of Minnesota National Forest land near the Boundary Waters from mineral entry for 20 years. The resolution invoked chapter 8 of title 5 — the Congressional Review Act — and, once signed, voided the order as if it had never been issued. Because of the "substantially the same" bar, the agency cannot reissue that withdrawal without new congressional authorization. Our full analysis walks through what the order had done and what the disapproval changed: the BLM mining ban reversal.