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Constitutional Law Keyed to Choper
Coleman v. Miller
Citation:
307 U.S. 433 (1939)Facts
In June 1924, Congress proposed the Child Labor Amendment to the Constitution. In January 1925, the Kansas Legislature rejected the amendment. Twelve years later, in January 1937, the Kansas Senate considered a resolution to ratify the amendment. The vote in the Senate was tied 20-20, whereupon the Lieutenant Governor, as presiding officer, cast the deciding vote in favor of ratification. The resolution subsequently passed the House of Representatives. Twenty senators who had voted against ratification brought an original mandamus action in the Kansas Supreme Court, seeking to prevent state officials from certifying the ratification. They argued that the Lieutenant Governor had no authority to cast the deciding vote, that Kansas had exhausted its power to act by its 1925 rejection, and that the proposed amendment had lost its vitality due to the passage of time. The Kansas Supreme Court denied the writ, and the case was brought to the U.S. Supreme Court.
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