U. S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton
The Supreme Court struck down an Arkansas constitutional amendment that barred longtime members of Congress from appearing on the ballot for reelection, ruling that states cannot add qualifications for Congress beyond the age, citizenship, and residency requirements already listed in the Constitution.
Because dozens of states had adopted similar term-limit measures in the early 1990s, the 5-4 ruling effectively invalidated that entire wave of state-level term-limit laws for Congress, leaving federal term limits achievable only through a constitutional amendment.
“If the qualifications set forth in the text of the Constitution are to be changed, that text must be amended.”
The majority's core statement that only a constitutional amendment, not state law, can alter congressional qualifications.
How it got here: An Arkansas trial court ruled the term-limit provision unconstitutional; the Arkansas Supreme Court affirmed 5-2; the state and term-limit advocates sought review, and the Supreme Court granted certiorari.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Arkansas voters adopted Amendment 73 in 1992, barring candidates who had already served three House terms or two Senate terms from appearing on the general-election ballot for those seats (they could still run as write-ins). Arkansas voter Bobbie Hill and the League of Women Voters sued to void the measure, while the state's Attorney General and the group U.S. Term Limits, Inc. defended it as a permissible restriction adopted by the people themselves.
The question before the Court
Could Arkansas keep long-serving members of Congress off the general-election ballot as a way of imposing term limits?
Why it matters
The decision voided term-limit laws that voters in more than twenty states had enacted for their congressional delegations, meaning incumbents in those states can keep running for reelection indefinitely unless the Constitution itself is amended. It also drew a sharp line against any state effort to add eligibility hurdles—however creatively packaged—for federal office.
What changes now
The ruling is a final merits decision, not subject to further proceedings beyond affirming the state court's judgment invalidating Section 3 of Amendment 73. Because the reasoning applies with equal force to similar term-limit and ballot-access measures adopted by other states, the decision effectively ended the state-level congressional term-limits movement; any future term limits on Congress would require a formal amendment to the U.S. Constitution under Article V.
What this does not decide
The Court did not resolve every question about how far states may go in regulating federal elections under the Elections Clause, nor did it decide whether laws aimed at leveling incumbency advantages (rather than disqualifying candidates) might be analyzed differently under the First and Fourteenth Amendments, a distinction the dissent pressed but the majority did not need to reach.
Concurrences and dissents
Concurrence — Justice Kennedy
Justice Kennedy agreed with the majority but wrote separately to stress that the Constitution created a direct relationship between the national government and individual citizens, distinct from their state citizenship. He argued that the dissent's framing of the case as purely a states'-rights question understated this dual federal-state citizenship and the republican character of the national government, which he saw as reinforcing why states cannot interfere with the selection of federal representatives.
Dissent — Justice Thomas
“The Constitution is simply silent on this question. And where the Constitution is silent, it raises no bar to action by the States or the people.”Thomas's central objection that constitutional silence favors state power rather than forbidding it.
Justice Thomas argued that the Constitution's silence on state power to add congressional qualifications means states retain that power under the Tenth Amendment, since all governmental power flows from the people of the states except where affirmatively withdrawn. He contended the Qualifications Clauses set only minimum, not exclusive, requirements, that the historical record does not support the majority's exclusivity reading, and that the majority's democratic-principles argument improperly extends reasoning about congressional self-dealing to bar the people themselves from adopting eligibility rules.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court built on Powell v. McCormack (1969), which held that Congress cannot add to the age, citizenship, and residency qualifications for its own members listed in the Constitution's Qualifications Clauses, concluding that history and the Constitution's text show the Framers meant those qualifications to be fixed and exclusive.
- The Court then asked whether the Tenth Amendment—which reserves to the states any power not given to the federal government—lets states add their own qualifications. It concluded no such power existed before the Constitution was ratified, because the right to elect members of a national Congress was itself a new creation of the Constitution, not something states previously controlled.
- Independently, the Court reasoned that even if states had once held some original power in this area, the structure and history of the Constitution show the Framers intended the listed qualifications to be the exclusive standard, precluding either Congress or the states from supplementing them, in order to preserve a uniform national legislature answerable to the whole people.
- The Court rejected the argument that Amendment 73 was merely a 'ballot access' rule under the Elections Clause rather than a qualification, reasoning that constitutional guarantees cannot be evaded through indirect means, and the state court itself had found the amendment's intent and effect was to disqualify incumbents.
- Applying that principle, the Court held that a measure with the avowed purpose and practical effect of keeping certain candidates off the ballot functions as an added qualification regardless of its label, so it violates the same constitutional exclusivity that bars Congress from adding qualifications.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Reaffirms Powell v. McCormack (395 U.S. 486)
The Court relied on and reaffirmed Powell's holding that Congress cannot add qualifications for its own members.
Reaffirms McCulloch v. Maryland (4 Wheat. 316)
The Court relied on McCulloch's reasoning about which powers count as 'original' state powers under constitutional silence.