Twenty-seventh Amendment to the United States Constitution

The Twenty-seventh Amendment to the United States Constitution (Amendment XXVII) has to do with the salaries paid to members of the United States Congress.

Congress is made of two "Houses," and the members of each House serve different terms (amounts of time in office). Members of the United States Senate serve six-year terms, and members of the United States House of Representatives serve two years each. The Twenty-seventh Amendment says that no law can change Congresspeople's salaries until a new two-year term for Representatives starts.

As of 2024, the Twenty-seventh amendment is the last amendment that has been added to the Constitution. It took longer for the states to ratify this amendment than any other in history.^[a] The 1st United States Congress sent the suggested amendment to the states for their approval on September 25, 1789. It was not until May 7, 1992, that enough states ratified the amendment for it to be added to the Constitution. The ratification process had taken 202 years, 7 months, and 12 days – the longest in United States history.^[2]

Text

When Congress first proposed the amendment in 1789, this is the text they suggested:

No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened.^[2]

History

On September 25, 1789, the first United States Congress gave a group of 12 amendments to the states for their approval. Written by James Madison, these were the first 12 Constitutional amendments ever written. One of them was an amendment about salaries for Members of Congress.^[3] Madison wanted to protect against Congresspeople being able to give themselves raises whenever they wanted to, while they were in the middle of their terms and the people could not vote them out.^[3]

In 1791, the states ratified ten of the 12 suggested amendments. These ten amendments became the Bill of Rights. However, the states did not ratify the other two amendments out of the 12 – including the one on limiting pay for Congresspeople.^[3]

Proposal and ratification

Proposal by Congress

James Madison first proposed this amendment in the United States House of Representatives on June 8, 1789.^[4] On August 24, 1789, the House passed the suggested amendment and sixteen others. The proposals went next to the United States Senate, which made 26 different changes to the House's suggested amendments. After taking out some parts of the House amendments, and combining others, the Senate approved a package of twelve suggested amendments on September 9, 1789.^[5]

  Ratified Amendment between 1789–1792

  Ratified Amendment, 1873

  Ratified Amendment, 1978–1991

  Ratified Amendment, May 1992

  Ratified Amendment after it was enacted, 1992–95

  Ratified Amendment twice (NC: 1789/1989; KY: 1792/1996)

  Never ratified the Amendment

Now a committee of House and Senate members had to meet to figure out a compromise and come up with amendments that they could all agree on. After three days, they had come up with 12 suggested amendments, which they brought back to the full House and Senate. That same day – September 24, 1789 – the House agreed on the 12 proposed amendments. The next day, the Senate agreed too. The 12 amendments included the one on Congressional pay.^[6]

Ratification by the states

Congress sent the package of 12 amendments to the states on September 25, 1789. For these amendments to be added to the Constitution, three-fourths of the state legislatures would have to ratify (approve) the amendments. At the time, there were only 11 states (North Carolina and Rhode Island had not ratified the Constitution yet^[b]).^[7] This meant just nine states would have to approve the amendments to add them to the Constitution.

On December 15, 1791, the states ratified ten of the twelve suggested amendments. These got added to the Constitution together as the Bill of Rights. However, at this time, only six states had ratified the Congressional pay amendment.

Over the next 186 years, only two more states ratified the Amendment. Meanwhile, many more states joined the United States. This meant that a larger number of states would need to ratify the amendment to get it added to the Constitution, since three-fourths of the state legislatures needed to ratify it, and there were more and more states as time went on.

The states ratified the Amendment in this order:^[8]

Order	State	Date	Years Since 1789	Notes
1	Maryland	December 19, 1789	0
2	North Carolina	December 22, 1789	0	Reaffirmed (re-signed) July 4, 1989[9]
3	South Carolina	January 19, 1790	1
4	Delaware	January 28, 1790	1
5	Vermont	November 3, 1791	2
6	Virginia	December 15, 1791	2
	Kentucky	June 27, 1792	3	Ratification was unknown until 1992[c]; Reaffirmed March 21, 1996
7	Ohio	May 6, 1873	84	Ratified as a protest against the 1873 "Salary Grab Act"[12]
8	Wyoming	March 6, 1978	189	Ratified as a protest against a Congressional pay raise[13]
9	Maine	April 27, 1983	194
10	Colorado	April 22, 1984	195
11	South Dakota	February 21, 1985	196
12	New Hampshire	March 7, 1985	196	State had rejected ratification in 1790[14]
13	Arizona	April 3, 1985	196
14	Tennessee	May 28, 1985	196
15	Oklahoma	July 1, 1985	196
16	New Mexico	February 14, 1986	197
17	Indiana	February 24, 1986	197
18	Utah	February 25, 1986	197
19	Arkansas	March 13, 1987	198
20	Montana	March 17, 1987	198
21	Connecticut	May 13, 1987	198
22	Wisconsin	July 15, 1987	198
23	Georgia	February 2, 1988	199
24	West Virginia	March 10, 1988	199
25	Louisiana	July 7, 1988	199
26	Iowa	February 9, 1989	199
27	Idaho	March 23, 1989	199
28	Nevada	April 26, 1989	199
29	Alaska	May 6, 1989	199
30	Oregon	May 19, 1989	199
31	Minnesota	May 22, 1989	199
32	Texas	May 25, 1989	199
33	Kansas	April 5, 1990	200
34	Florida	May 31, 1990	200
35	North Dakota	March 25, 1991	201
36	Alabama	May 5, 1992	202
37	Missouri	May 5, 1992	202
38	Michigan	May 7, 1992	202
Amendment added to the Constitution: May 7, 1992
	New Jersey	May 7, 1992	202	State rejected the Amendment in 1789[14]
	Illinois	May 12, 1992	202
	California	June 26, 1992	202
	Rhode Island	June 10, 1993	203	State rejected the Amendment in 1790[14]
	Hawaii	April 29, 1994	204
	Washington	April 6, 1995	205
Never ratified the Amendment
Massachusetts, Mississippi, Nebraska, New York, and Pennsylvania

Notes

1. For an amendment to be added to the Constitution, two-thirds of both Houses of Congress, and then three-fourths of the state legislatures, have to agree on it.^[1] There are a few other ways for amendments to be ratified,^[1] but they are very uncommon. See the page on Article Five of the United States Constitution for more information.
2. See the page on Article Seven of the United States Constitution for more details.
3. Kentucky should have been counted as the 7th state to ratify the Amendment. However, it was not until 1992 that anybody realized Kentucky ratified the Amendment in 1792. By then, the Archivist of the United States had already confirmed that the Amendment was added to the Constitution on May 7, 1992, when Michigan ratified it. Officially, though, if Alabama were included, the Amendment would have been ratified on May 5, 1992, when Missouri signed.^[10][11]