Hawke v. Smith (No. 1)
The Court ruled that Ohio could not require a public referendum on whether the state legislature's ratification of the proposed Eighteenth Amendment (Prohibition) should stand, because the U.S. Constitution assigns the power to ratify federal amendments to state legislatures alone.
The decision means that no state can substitute a popular vote for legislative ratification when it comes to amending the federal Constitution, reinforcing a uniform, nationwide method for changing the nation's founding document.
“It is but the expression of the assent of the State to. a proposed ..amendment.”
The Court's characterization of what a state legislature does when it ratifies a federal amendment.
How it got here: Ohio's trial court, appeals court, and state supreme court all rejected the challenge to the referendum; the case then came to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Ohio's legislature ratified the proposed Eighteenth Amendment (prohibiting alcohol for beverage purposes). A recently adopted provision of Ohio's state constitution let voters demand a referendum on the legislature's ratification votes for federal constitutional amendments. A citizen sued to stop Ohio's Secretary of State from spending public money to print ballots for such a referendum on the Amendment's ratification.
The question before the Court
Could Ohio let its voters use a statewide referendum to approve or reject the state legislature's ratification of a proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution?
Why it matters
The ruling confirmed that a single, uniform process governs how the United States Constitution is amended, regardless of individual state election-law preferences. States experimenting with referendums and direct democracy could not extend that power to federal constitutional ratification, protecting the amendment process from added local hurdles or delays.
What changes now
The case is sent back to the Ohio courts for further proceedings consistent with the Supreme Court's ruling, meaning Ohio's referendum on the ratification could not go forward and the legislature's ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment stood. This decision is a final merits ruling on the constitutional question and set the rule, still in place, that only state legislatures (or conventions when Congress specifies) may ratify federal constitutional amendments.
What this does not decide
The Court did not question the general validity of state referendums over ordinary state legislation, nor its own earlier ruling allowing a referendum on congressional redistricting. It held only that a referendum cannot be used to control a state legislature's ratification of a federal constitutional amendment.
Concurrences and dissents
How the Justices voted
Majority (1). Justice Day (author).
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court read Article V of the Constitution, which lays out only two ways to ratify a federal constitutional amendment: approval by the legislatures of three-fourths of the states, or by conventions in three-fourths of the states, with Congress choosing which method applies.
- The Court reasoned that the word 'legislatures' had a fixed, well-understood meaning at the time the Constitution was written — the elected body that makes a state's ordinary laws — and pointed to other constitutional clauses using the same term consistently to mean that representative body.
- The Court distinguished ordinary state lawmaking, which draws its authority from the people of the state and can be subjected to a referendum, from a state legislature's act of ratifying a federal amendment, which the Court characterized as merely expressing the state's assent under authority granted directly by the federal Constitution rather than as an act of state legislation.
- Because ratifying a federal amendment is not 'legislation' in the ordinary sense, the Court concluded that a state cannot control or condition that ratification through a state-law device like a referendum, since doing so would let states alter the ratification method the Constitution itself fixed.
- The Court distinguished an earlier decision allowing an Ohio referendum on congressional redistricting, explaining that redistricting was ordinary state legislative action expressly authorized by a different constitutional clause, unlike the distinct act of ratifying a federal amendment.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Distinguishes Davis v. Hildebrant (241 U.S. 565)
That case allowed a referendum on redistricting laws, which is ordinary legislation, unlike ratifying a federal amendment.
Reaffirms Hollingsworth v. Virginia (3 Dall. 378)
Reaffirmed that presidential approval is not required for proposing constitutional amendments.