Rider (legislation)
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In legislative practice, a rider is an additional provision annexed to a bill under the consideration of a legislature, having little connection with the subject matter of the bill. They are usually created as a tactic to pass a controversial provision which would not pass as its own bill. Occasionally, a controversial provision is attached to a less important bill not to be passed itself but to prevent the bill from being passed (in which case it is called a poison pill). Use of riders is customary in many legislative bodies, including the Congress of the United States.
Riders are most effective when attached to an important bill, such as an appropriation bill, because to veto or postpone such a bill could delay funding to governmental programs, causing serious problems.
The practical consequence of this custom is a limitation of the veto power of the executive: because the veto is an all-or-nothing power, the executive must either accept the riders or strike down the entire bill. In the United States, the Line Item Veto Act of 1996, a law struck down by the United States Supreme Court as unconstitutional in Clinton v. City of New York, allowed the President to veto single objectionable items, without affecting the main purpose of bills.
[edit] Situation in Europe
In some legislative systems, such as the British Parliament, riders are prevented by the existence of a long title of a bill which describes the full purpose of the bill. Any part of the bill which falls outside the scope of the long title would not be permitted. However, legislators often work around this limitation by naming a bill vaguely, such as by appending "and for connected purposes" to the name.
In continental Europe, rider activity is known as creating "salad laws" and are generally unconstitutional. Upon appeal constitutional courts will closely evaluate the full body of the law as well as the title. Should they determine that certain "ingredients of the salad" have no connection or significance to the bulk of the law, those provisions will be annulled (in serious cases with retroactive effect).
In 2005, the Constitutional Court of Hungary struck down the yearly national budget law in its entirety, because almost half of the paragraphs were not related to state fiscals at all, but modified 44 other existing pieces of legislation, which concerned health regulations, public education and foreign relations. This judicial ruling restricted the government's future options in bypassing due parliamentary debate and imposing certain reforms unilaterally.
Examples:
