Coleman v. Miller
The Supreme Court let Kansas's 1937 ratification of the long-dormant Child Labor Amendment stand, ruling that whether an earlier rejection blocked later ratification, and whether too many years had passed since Congress proposed the amendment, were political questions for Congress alone to decide.
The decision left courts largely out of policing the amendment process, giving Congress the final say over whether states can change their minds on ratification and how much delay is too much, a principle that still shapes constitutional amendment disputes today.
“We think that these senators have a plain, direct and adequate interest in maintaining the effectiveness of their votes.”
Explaining why the twenty senators had enough of a stake in the case to sue.
How it got here: The Kansas Supreme Court denied a writ of mandamus sought by the dissenting legislators and upheld the ratification; the U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari to review that decision.
The Case in Depth
What happened
In 1924 Congress proposed the Child Labor Amendment, letting Congress regulate child labor nationally. Kansas's legislature rejected it in 1925. In 1937, a new Kansas Senate resolution to ratify tied 20-20, and the Lieutenant Governor broke the tie in favor of ratification; the House then passed it too. Twenty of the senators who voted against ratification, plus three House members, sued in Kansas courts to block the ratification from being certified, arguing the Lieutenant Governor's vote was invalid and the amendment had expired.
The question before the Court
Could Kansas still ratify the Child Labor Amendment in 1937 even though its legislature had rejected it in 1925 and thirteen years had passed since Congress proposed it?
The Court's answer
Partly — the Court let Kansas's ratification stand, holding that whether an earlier legislative rejection barred a later ratification, and whether too much time had passed since Congress proposed the amendment, are political questions committed to Congress's judgment when it counts ratifications, not questions courts can resolve. Because Kansas's legislature had in fact voted to ratify, the Court refused to order state officials to block that ratification from being certified to Washington.
The Court also declined to decide whether Kansas's Lieutenant Governor could break the Senate's tie vote, since the Justices were evenly split on that specific question and said nothing further about it. The Kansas Supreme Court's judgment denying the challengers' mandamus request was therefore affirmed, though four other Justices would have dismissed the case entirely, believing the legislators lacked any personal stake sufficient to sue at all.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
The ruling means state legislators can go to court over how their votes on constitutional amendments are counted, but questions about whether a state can reverse course or whether an amendment expired from delay are left to Congress, not judges, to resolve when it finally counts up the ratifications.
What changes now
The decision is final on the merits presented, leaving the Kansas ratification's ultimate validity to be resolved, if at all, by Congress when it tallies ratifications for the amendment. The Child Labor Amendment itself was never ultimately adopted by three-fourths of the states, so the amendment lapsed in practice, but the Court's political-question framework for judging the ratification and time-limit issues continued to guide later amendment disputes.
What this does not decide
The Court did not decide whether Kansas's Lieutenant Governor could lawfully cast the tie-breaking Senate vote — the Justices split evenly on that question and said nothing further. It also did not set any judicial rule for how much delay makes a ratification too late, leaving that determination entirely to Congress.
Concurrences and dissents
Concurrence — Justice Black
Justice Black agreed with affirming the result but argued the Court went too far by treating any part of the amendment process as subject to judicial oversight. He argued Article V gives Congress complete and exclusive control over the entire amending process from submission to final adoption, with no room for courts to weigh in at any stage, and would have disapproved Dillon v. Gloss's suggestion that courts could impose a reasonable-time limitation.
Concurrence — Justice Frankfurter
Justice Frankfurter argued the Kansas legislators had no legal standing to sue in federal court at all, because their objections about the amendment's validity were generalized political grievances shared by every citizen rather than a personalized legal injury. He would have dismissed the writ of certiorari entirely, participating in the rest of the case only because the Court's ruling on standing controlled the outcome.
Dissent — Justice Butler
“I would hold that more than a reasonable time had elapsed”Butler's core objection that the Court should itself have ruled the amendment expired from delay.
Justice Butler argued the Court should have decided the reasonable-time question itself, just as it had in Dillon v. Gloss, rather than declaring it a political question for Congress. Applying that earlier decision's reasoning, he concluded that more than thirteen years was too long a gap between proposal and ratification, and would have reversed the Kansas Supreme Court's judgment upholding the ratification.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court first asked whether the twenty senators whose votes against ratification had been overridden had a personal enough stake to bring the case, since federal courts only hear genuine legal disputes and not generalized political grievances. It found that because their votes, if given effect, would have defeated the resolution, they had a direct and adequate interest in the case distinct from an ordinary citizen's.
- On whether the Lieutenant Governor was part of the 'legislature' empowered under Article V (the constitutional provision governing how amendments are proposed and ratified) to cast the deciding tie-breaking vote, the Justices split evenly, so the Court expressed no view on that question at all.
- Turning to whether a prior rejection permanently used up a state's power to ratify, the Court looked to how Congress had handled disputed withdrawals of ratification during the Fourteenth Amendment's adoption in the 1860s, and concluded that Congress, not the judiciary, had historically been treated as the body that resolves such disputes when it finally certifies an amendment's adoption.
- Applying that same political-question approach (treating an issue as one for the elected branches to resolve rather than the courts) to the argument that thirteen years was too long a gap between proposal and ratification, the Court reasoned that judging 'reasonableness' here would require weighing shifting economic, social, and political conditions that courts have no reliable standards for assessing.
- Because Congress alone would make the final call on both the rejection and the delay issues once ratifications were certified, the Court concluded there was no legal basis for ordering Kansas officials to withhold certification of the legislature's 1937 ratification vote.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Limits Dillon v. Gloss (256 U.S. 368)
The Court limited Dillon's implication that courts decide reasonable-time questions, leaving that judgment to Congress instead.
Reaffirms Hawke v. Smith (253 U.S. 221)
Relied on as controlling authority that ratification questions are exclusively federal, not state, questions.
Reaffirms Leser v. Garnett (258 U.S. 130)
Relied on as controlling authority supporting the senators' standing to seek review of the state court's ratification ruling.