by Stacey Selleck
As Digital Director for U.S. Term Limits, I am tasked with interacting with term limits supporters on social media every day. We encourage folks to contact their state and federal legislators asking them to support a term limits amendment to the Constitution.
We are so grateful to those of you who send emails, tweet, and make phone calls. We are especially thankful to those of you who make appointments to meet with your state representatives in person to impress upon them how important an issue term limits is for our country.
Oftentimes, activists get back to me with the response of the lawmaker. One of the biggest misconceptions legislators have is that the Supreme Court decided that states may not impose term limits on Congress. While they are drawing on specific caselaw, we at U.S. Term Limits can verify, first hand, that this statement is absolutely false.
While it is true that states may not individually set limits on their own congressional members, the states have every power to collectively propose and ratify a term limits amendment that applies to every federal senator and house representative.
How do I know this? The split decision of the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) was issued against us, U.S. Term Limits in that 1995 case, Thornton v U.S. Term Limits.
The judgment of SCOTUS stated that the qualifications to hold the office of Senate and House Representative are exclusively defined in the Constitution and states shall not include term limits as part of the additional criteria. (The fact that the states do limit who gets on the ballot by other means is another topic for discussion.) The qualifications for U.S. House Members and Senators are as follows:
Qualifications for House Members
“No Person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the age of twenty five Years, and been seven Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen.”
— U.S. Constitution, Article I, section 2, clause 2
Qualifications for Senators
“No Person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to the age of thirty Years, and been nine Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State for which he shall be chosen.”
— U.S. Constitution, Article I, section 3, clause 3
While, states legislating term limits on their own Senators and House members through state statute is unconstitutional, ratifying a term limits amendment via Article V of the U.S. Constitution, will make national term limits on Congress constitutional.
Article V allows for proposal of amendments to the U.S. Constitution by either the Congress or a proposal convention of state legislatures. There have been hundreds of Article V applications passed by states and more than 11,000 times by Congress. To date, only 27 have been ratified. That’s a pretty high bar and rightfully so.
Congress had no problem using Article V to propose term limits on the President in 1947. It is clear that Congress will never propose a term limits amendment on itself. Therefore, the states are obligated to do so. This is as close as we get to a citizens’ initiative. There is no such thing as a national ballot to amend the Constitution. It just doesn’t exist.
With such broad national consensus on the issue, the time has never been more right. Contact your state legislators and ask them to support an Article V application for the sole purpose of proposing term limits on Congress. We make it easy. It’s time to strike while the iron is hot.