This is the proper conclusion drawn from reading the United States Constitution, its history and context, and the case law associated with this article’s title.
The states placed all their sovereignty for amending the United States Constitution into Article V, when it was written and when they were adopted into the United States. There is no residual sovereignty held by the states reserved for them in the Tenth Amendment, because there was no amendatory power held by the states prior to the Constitution’s existence.
Today there are only two states that have placed additional requirements for amending the US Constitution into their state constitutions: Illinois and Kansas; both are supermajority requirements added in the early-1970s. Illinois’ requires an affirmative vote by a 3/5ths supermajority, or 60%, of both chambers of its legislature for passage of resolutions seeking a convention of states to propose amendments or to ratify amendments already proposed. Kansas’ is the same in all regards except that it requires a higher 2/3rds supermajority, or 67%, for these actions.
The Illinois Constitution’s added requirement was ruled unenforceable in a case in federal district court in 1975. That case, decided by a three-judge panel that included soon-to-be Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, was Dyer v. Blair. Yet, today, the supermajority language still sits in the Illinois Constitution, just as it also does in Article 2 Section 13 of the Kansas Constitution, where it is unenforceable and irrelevant.
The most authoritative writing on this subject is The Law of Article V: State Initiation of Constitutional Amendments by Robert G. Natelson (2nd ed., 2020). In it the following is found in Section 3.6:
When Congress or state legislatures exercise Article V authority, they are not exercising their normal legislative powers, and the resolutions they pass are not “laws.” … At the state level, legislatures and electorates often have adopted state constitutional rules, legislation, and interstate compacts to manipulate the amendment procedure. In a long line of cases the courts have rejected those efforts.
The author cites no fewer than twenty-four cases in the footnote for that assertion. One of the cases cited is from Missouri Circuit Court in 2018. A relevant part of the opinion in that case, Calzone v. Richard, follows:
The legislature was not exercising its power to enact laws when it approved [an Article V application], rather it was exercising authority granted under Article V of the United States Constitution. A state constitution may not add requirements to Article V’s process for amending the federal constitution.
And so it is that the Kansas Constitution may not add requirements to the amendment process for the United States Constitution. That process belongs to the people of the United States equally as a method of redress, among other things, for their grievances against that government.
