Background
In November 2022, North Dakota voters approved an initiated measure adding Article XV to the state constitution, imposing eight-year cumulative term limits on members of both chambers of the Legislative Assembly. Critically, Section 4 of that article did more than establish limits — it expressly stripped the legislature of its otherwise-available authority under Article IV, Section 16 to propose any amendment altering or repealing those limits, reserving that power exclusively to the people through initiative petition.
In 2025, the Legislative Assembly nonetheless adopted Senate Concurrent Resolution 4008 by majority vote in each chamber, proposing Constitutional Measure 1 to be placed on the November 2026 general election ballot. The measure would have amended the term limits in Article XV, Section 1 and repealed Section 4’s prohibition on legislative action altogether. The Secretary of State accepted the resolution and indicated the measure would appear on the ballot.
Terence Bjerke and Leverrett Larsen — North Dakota electors and original sponsors of the 2022 Term Limits Initiative — petitioned the North Dakota Supreme Court to invoke its discretionary original jurisdiction, declare S.C.R. 4008 void, and enjoin the Secretary of State from placing Constitutional Measure 1 on the ballot. The Legislative Assembly opposed the petition on ripeness, standing, and merits grounds, arguing its general amendment authority under Article IV, Section 16 remained intact.
The Court’s Holding
The North Dakota Supreme Court unanimously exercised its discretionary original jurisdiction, declared S.C.R. 4008 unconstitutionally adopted, and declared both the resolution and Constitutional Measure 1 void ab initio. The Court held that Article XV, Section 4’s “notwithstanding” clause unambiguously overrides the legislature’s general amendment authority under Article IV, Section 16. When the voters enacted Article XV in 2022, they expressly withheld from the legislature the power to propose any amendment touching those term limits — and the legislature cannot bootstrap its way around that limitation by simultaneously proposing to repeal the very restriction on its authority.
Before reaching the merits, the Court rejected the Legislative Assembly’s justiciability arguments. It held the petition was ripe because the challenge targeted the legislature’s procedural authority to place the measure on the ballot at all — a question that, following Anderson v. Byrne, can be resolved before the election just as well as after. It further held that the petitioners, as original initiative sponsors and qualified electors, had standing because the alleged injury arose from the mere placement of a constitutionally unauthorized measure on the ballot and implicated the sovereignty and prerogatives of the state. The Court also dismissed the legislature’s Guarantee Clause argument — that Section 4 infringes the republican form of government guarantee — as a non-justiciable political question committed to Congress. Attorney’s fees were denied.
Because the Article XV, Section 4 violation was dispositive, the Court did not address the petitioners’ additional claim under Article III, Section 8.
Key Takeaways
- A voter-enacted constitutional provision can expressly limit the legislature’s general authority to propose constitutional amendments; when it does, the specific limitation controls over the general grant of power in Article IV, Section 16.
- A pre-election ballot challenge is ripe for judicial review when it is procedural in nature — i.e., it contests whether the proposing authority had constitutional power to act — as opposed to a substantive challenge to what the measure would do if passed.
- Sponsors of a voter initiative have standing to enforce the constitutional provisions they helped place before the electorate when the legislature acts to circumvent them, particularly where the state’s sovereignty and the people’s reserved powers are implicated.
- Guarantee Clause arguments (U.S. Const. art. IV, § 4) challenging state constitutional provisions as incompatible with a republican form of government are non-justiciable political questions and provide no basis for invalidating state law.
Why It Matters
The decision is a significant affirmation of direct democracy in North Dakota: when voters enact a constitutional provision that expressly reserves amendment authority to themselves, the legislature cannot use its general amendment powers to claw that authority back. The ruling makes clear that the “notwithstanding” language chosen by the people in 2022 was operative and enforceable — not mere surplusage subject to legislative override.
The case also provides a useful doctrinal clarification on pre-election ballot challenges: courts may — and should — intervene before an election when the dispute turns on whether the proposing authority had constitutional permission to act, because such procedural defects can be identified and remedied without waiting for voters to pass or reject a potentially void measure. That principle applies equally to legislatively proposed and citizen-initiated constitutional amendments.