U.S. Term Limits v. Thornton

U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued November 29, 1994 Decided May 22, 1995
Full case name	U.S. Term Limits, Incorporated, et al., Petitioners v. Ray Thornton, et al.; Winston Bryant, Attorney General of Arkansas, Petitioner v. Bobbie E. Hill, et al.
Citations	514 U.S. 779 (more) 115 S. Ct. 1842; 131 L. Ed. 2d 881; 1995 U.S. LEXIS 3487; 63 U.S.L.W. 4413; 95 Cal. Daily Op. Service 3790; 95 Daily Journal DAR 6496; 9 Fla. L. Weekly Fed. S 29
Prior history	On writs of cert. to the Supreme Court of Arkansas
Holding
States cannot impose qualifications for prospective members of Congress stricter than those in the Constitution.
Court membership
Case opinions
Majority	Stevens, joined by Kennedy, Souter, Ginsburg, Breyer
Concurrence	Kennedy
Dissent	Thomas, joined by Rehnquist, O'Connor, Scalia
Laws applied
U.S. Const. art. I as modified by Amend XVII

U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton, 514 U.S. 779 (1995), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that states cannot impose qualifications for prospective members of the U.S. Congress stricter than those specified in the Constitution. The decision invalidated the Congressional term limit provisions of 23 states. The parties to the case were U.S. Term Limits, a non-profit advocacy group, and Arkansas politician Ray Thornton, among others.

Amendment 73 to the Arkansas Constitution denied ballot access to any federal Congressional candidate having already served three terms in the U.S. House or two terms in the U.S. Senate. However, such a candidate was not barred from being written-in and winning by that method.

Soon after the amendment's adoption by ballot measure at the general election on November 3, 1992, Bobbie Hill, a member of the League of Women Voters, sued in state court to have it invalidated. She alleged that the new restrictions amounted to an unwarranted expansion of the specific qualifications for membership in Congress enumerated in the U.S. Constitution:

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 (Article I, section 2),