TOPEKA — A pair of conservative state legislators filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court to challenge a belief the Kansas Constitution required two-thirds majorities in the House and Senate to endorse calling a constitutional convention to propose amendments to the U.S. Constitution.
Attorneys for Shawnee Sen. Mike Thompson and Sylvia Rep. Michael Murphy, both Republicans, submitted a seven-page petition in a suit against Senate President Ty Masterson and House Speaker Dan Hawkins, also Republicans. All four legislators voted during the 2023 legislative session for resolutions supporting Kansas’ participation in a convention of states to consider amendments to the federal constitution.
The House and Senate resolutions didn’t receive two-thirds majority backing during March and were defeated. Thompson and Murphy argued those resolutions should be viewed as passed because only simple majorities were necessary. Masterson and Hawkins, operating on the belief a supermajority was required, declared both resolutions lost.
The plaintiffs want a federal judge to issue judgments saying it was a violation of Article 2, Section 13 of the Kansas Constitution to mandate two-thirds majorities on House and Senate resolutions proposing a convention to weigh changes to the U.S. Constitution. The legislators want a judge to affirm both resolutions actually passed 10 months ago by majority vote.
“Defendants’ decisions as the presiding officers of each chamber to reject the passage of these concurrent resolutions … were incorrect as a matter of law,” said Edward Greim, a Kansas City, Missouri, attorney representing Thompson and Murphy in the lawsuit.
An organization known as Convention of States Foundation, as well as other groups, have urged state legislatures to formally endorse a national convention to consider constitutional reform. Convention of States sought a convention to raise amendments imposing fiscal restraint on the federal government, limits on the jurisdiction of federal legislative, executive and judicial branches, and to set term limits for members of the federal legislative bodies or judicial branches.
So far, 19 states have adopted convention resolutions to ask Congress to open a convention of states. A half-dozen resolutions of that type have been considered in Kansas, but none garnered the two-thirds support sought.
“I don’t think anyone with sincerity could argue the federal government isn’t out of control,” Thompson said during Senate floor debate on the Convention of States resolution. “I hear from constituents all the time asking for us to push back. This is the way we do it.”
In the Senate, the March vote on Senate Concurrent Resolution 1607 was 22-16, or five votes shy of two-thirds. The House vote on House Concurrent Resolution 5008 was 74-48. That was 10 votes below the two-thirds threshold. Both chambers apply a simple-majority rule to votes on non-constitutional resolutions.
“The lawsuit is about resolving a longstanding question about whether the Kansas Constitution can require a higher threshold of votes to adopt measures envisioned by Article V of the United States Constitution, including the Convention of States,” said Mike Pirner, a spokesman for Masterson.
The National Conference of State Legislatures said the Founding Fathers, in drafting and refining the Constitution, believed it should not be easy to amend the nation’s foundational document.
Americans are familiar with the process whereby Congress, with two-thirds majority votes, initiate consideration by individual states of amendments to the U.S. Constitution. An amendment endorsed by Congress couldn’t be implemented until voters in 38 states, or three-fourths of the total, adopted the change. This process has been relied upon 27 times to amend the national constitution.
The lesser-known route would be for a convention of states to directly send proposed constitutional amendments to the states for potential ratification. The United States has never sidestepped Congress with a convention of states — beyond the original Constitutional Convention in 1787 — in an effort to assess recommendations for revision of the U.S. Constitution.
