Democratic majority in Congress or no, the inmates at Guantanamo won't be seeing the inside of a civilian courtroom anytime soon, the Washington Post reports. An amendment to the Senate's annual defense policy bill would have granted the prisoners there legal standing to sue over their continued detention, a right formally stripped from them when last year's Military Commissions Act formally suspended Habeas Corpus.
The vote left some Democrats frustrated with their thin majority. Senator Diane Feinstein (D-Ca) issued a statement calling the senate's inability to best a Republican minority and get the amendment up for a vote on the Senate floor "deeply disappointing."
But for civil liberties groups that pushed for a reversal, there is a silver lining: Every Democratic senator lined up in favor of the amendment, and the majority even managed to peel off six Republicans, twice as many as a similar bill garnered last year.
As Reuters notes, the vote isn't going to settle the fight over just what rights the prisoners deemed "enemy combatants" actually have. The Supreme Court is expected to take on a challenge to the the Military Commissions Act later this year.
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