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Background

On February 4th, 2021, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene was removed from her committee assignments by a vote of 230 - 199 as stated in H.Res.72 of the 117th congress:

Whereas clause 1 of rule XXIII of the Rules of the House of Representatives provides, “A Member, Delegate, Resident Commissioner, officer, or employee of the House shall behave at all times in a manner that shall reflect creditably on the House.”; and

Whereas Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene should be removed from her committee assignments in light of conduct she has exhibited: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved, That the following named Member be, and is hereby, removed from the following standing committees of the House of Representatives:

Committee On The Budget:

Mrs. Greene of Georgia.

Committee On Education And Labor:

Mrs. Greene of Georgia.

Attest:

However, by the wording of the resolution it only removed her from her current specific assignments. This led me to ask the following question:

Question

If a congress person is censured and removed from their current committee assignments, can they later be assigned to different committees in the same congress?

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    Censure is irrelevant in this case. It has no legal bearing of any kind (unless she were chair of a committee, in which case she'd have to step down, but not necessarily be removed from the committee), it's just a formal way of saying "We're very disappointed in you". Actual removal from committees is of course another matter.
    – Darrel Hoffman
    Feb 9, 2021 at 19:07

2 Answers 2

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If a congress person is censured and removed from their current committee assignments, can they later be assigned to different committees in the same congress?

Yes. All committee assignments are made by a resolution in the respective chamber.

The resolution assigning Rep. Greene to the two committees, from which she was removed, was H.Res.63. Should a resolution be made to assign Rep. Greene to other committees, that resolution will be voted on by the House. Normally such resolutions are agreed to without objection. In the case of Rep. Greene, it seems likely that objections would be raised, thus requiring a floor vote by the House.

Should the committee assignment resolution be agreed to without objection or by a majority vote of the members of the House, the committee assignment will be made; otherwise, the assignment will be rejected.

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    One has to wonder why H. Res. 63 was not objected to... since it passed on Jan 28.
    – Fizz
    Feb 8, 2021 at 17:54
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    @Fizz - Greene was "accused" of violating Rule XXIII Code of Official Conduct, which falls under Rule X (g) Committee on Ethics. H.Res.72, introduced February 1, 2021, to remove Rep, Greene, was referred to the Committee on Ethics. This was followed by H.Res.91, February 4, 2021, which set the rules for debate on H.Res.72. To object to H.Res.63, before the ethics complaint was reviewed, might have been deemed as inappropriate. Having been removed, objection to a subsequent committee assignment would be reasonable.
    – Rick Smith
    Feb 8, 2021 at 19:52
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    Some of the reporting about Rep. Greene's most incendiary conduct, such as this January 26th report about calls for violence against Democratic leaders and other reports about her attacks on a school shooting survivor, didn't come out until close to the 28th. Reports about her post blaming Rothschild space lasers for a CA wildfire came out on 28th. It clearly took some time to gather information and give Republicans a chance, a process that largely took place after H.Res.63 already passed
    – Zach Lipton
    Feb 9, 2021 at 2:40
  • Also, H. Res. 63 was an omnibus resolution that assigned multiple people (after skimming the text, I'm guessing all of the Republicans) to their committees, so it would have been especially dicey to hold it up just to object to Greene. Any later resolution to assign committee memberships would cover just Greene, or perhaps Greene and a few other members in exceptional circumstances (such as new members after filling a vacancy, or people who wanted to change committees), so it would be much easier to refuse to pass it until Greene was taken out (or to amend it to remove her, if that's a thing).
    – Toby Bartels
    Feb 9, 2021 at 21:30
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It is highly likely that they would just remove her from any new committees if she got placed on any. A lot of effort was put into this process by first trying to work with her party in order to have them take action prior to taking action themselves. Since the underlying issues are still present and unlikely to go away her not being on committees is unlikely to change. Worst case scenario is there is just a war of her getting assigned new committees and removed from them as a response.

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    How would she get appointed to new committees if the majority doesn't want her on them?
    – Barmar
    Feb 8, 2021 at 23:53

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