U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton, 514 U.S. 799 (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 the politician Ray Thornton, among others.
The Supreme Court affirmed by a 5-4 vote. The majority and minority articulated different views of the character of the federal structure established in the Constitution. Writing for the majority, Justice John Paul Stevens concluded that:
“Finally, state-imposed restrictions, unlike the congressionally imposed restrictions at issue in Powell, violate a third idea central to this basic principle: that the right to choose representatives belongs not to the States, but to the people…Following the adoption of the 17th Amendment in 1913, this ideal was extended to elections for the Senate. The Congress of the United States, therefore, is not a confederation of nations in which separate sovereigns are represented by appointed delegates, but is instead a body composed of representative of the people.”