U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton

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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
Case history
Prior	U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Hill, 316 Ark. 251, 872 S.W.2d 349 (1994); cert. granted, 512 U.S. 1218 (1994).
Holding
States cannot impose qualifications for prospective members of Congress stricter than those in the Constitution.
Court membership
Chief Justice William Rehnquist Associate Justices John P. Stevens · Sandra Day O'Connor Antonin Scalia · Anthony Kennedy David Souter · Clarence Thomas Ruth Bader Ginsburg · Stephen Breyer
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, § 4, cl. 1, as modified by U.S. Const. amend. XVII U.S. Const. amend. X

U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton, 514 U.S. 779 (1995), is a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in which the Court ruled that states cannot impose qualifications for prospective members of the U.S. Congress stricter than those the Constitution specifies.^[1] The decision invalidated 23 states' Congressional term limit provisions.^[2][3] The parties to the case were U.S. Term Limits, a nonprofit advocacy group, and Arkansas politician Ray Thornton, among others.^[4]