Recently, a member of the House of Representatives proposed changing the Constitution to allow current President Donald Trump the option of running for a third term as president. Constitutional amendment proposals are common during congressional terms, but few ever make it to the states as proposed amendments.
On Jan. 23, 2025, Rep. Andrew Ogles (R-Tenn.) introduced House Joint Resolution 29, which proposes that “no person shall be elected to the office of the President more than three times,” with a disqualification placed on persons who had served two consecutive terms as president from running for a third term.
Under those terms, Trump could run for a third term, while three former presidents who served two consecutive terms (Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and Bill Clinton) would be disqualified. For now, the Ogles amendment will face the same challenging path as other amendments outlined under the Constitution’s Article V process.
The last proposed amendment approved by Congress and sent to the states for ratification was the District of Columbia Voting Rights amendment, which would have repealed the 23rd Amendment to grant the District of Columbia rights akin to those of a state, with two senators and proportional representation in the House. On Aug. 22, 1978, the Senate approved a joint resolution previously passed by the House of Representatives. However, the proposed District of Columbia Voting Rights amendment was only approved by 16 states of the required 38 states before its expiration date seven years after congressional approval.
While the 27th Amendment—the most recent amendment—joined the Constitution in 1992, it was first proposed on Sept. 25, 1789, and was able to be ratified centuries later as it did not contain a ratification deadline. Since 1992, elected officials have introduced more than 1,400 proposed amendments in Congress for consideration, and not one has received the two-thirds vote required in both chambers to move forward to the states for ratification, where 38—or three-fourths of—states are needed to add the amendment to the Constitution.
In all, 33 proposed amendments approved by Congress have been sent to the states for ratification since 1789, with 27 amendments ratified so far, and six amendments failing to gain full ratification. As of late January 2025, Congress had introduced nearly 12,000 potential amendments for consideration since 1789.
In the current 119th Congress, proposed amendments were introduced as soon as the House and Senate started conducting business, including proposed amendments to fix the number of justices on the Supreme Court at nine justices, to establish congressional term limits, and require a balanced budget. These are proposed amendments that have frequently been introduced in recent sessions of Congress.
Other proposed amendments in January 2025 include repealing of the federal income tax, lowering the voting age to 16 years of age for federal elections, placing limits on presidential pardon powers, and granting the president line-item veto powers.
How Congress Handles Proposed Amendments
Any member of Congress can offer a proposed amendment to the Constitution, but such a resolution needs to make a journey through a series of committees to get a floor vote. Because the Constitution’s Article V does not require the president to approve a constitutional amendment, there are fewer steps for a joint resolution proposing a constitutional amendment in the House or Senate.
In the House, the Judiciary Committee considers proposed constitutional amendments and must approve any before they are potentially sent to the House floor for a full vote. Once on the floor, two-thirds of the House must approve the exact language of the amendment, with no changes. Then, identical approval processes must be conducted in the Senate and concluded by the end of that sitting of Congress.
In the 1990s, the proposed balanced budget amendment survived most of the congressional approval process to just fall short on the final vote in the Senate. In March 1995, the Senate rejected a balanced budget amendment approved by a Republican-dominated House by one vote, when Senator Mark Hatfield (R-Ore.) refused to approve the amendment in the final floor vote.
The District of Columbia Voting Rights Amendment made it through the detailed approval process in Congress, but not without some drama. The proposed amendment sought to repeal the current 23rd Amendment to the Constitution, which was ratified in 1961 and gave three electoral votes to electors in the District of Columbia. The Voting Rights Amendment sought to give the District of Columbia membership in the House and Senate with full voting rights, but it did not grant statehood to the federal district (which is a power reserved to Congress). In addition, the Voting Rights Amendment gave the District of Columbia a role in ratifying any constitutional amendment proposed to the states for ratification.
The House passed the proposed District of Columbia Voting Rights Amendment by an 11-vote margin in March 1978, but its approval in the Senate faced a more challenging task. According to published reports about the voting outcome on Aug. 22, 1978, in the Senate vote was unknown when the roll call started, and the amendment passed by one vote. However, the amendment was only ratified by 16 states during its seven-year ratification period, and therefore failed to become a new addition to the Constitution.
In addition to the District of Columbia Voting Rights Amendment, five other amendments were approved by Congress for ratification by the states and never fully ratified as of January 2025.
One of these, the proposed Equal Rights Amendment (or ERA), has received recent publicity after President Joe Biden said he considered the amendment as ratified during his final days in office. The matter remains unsettled after the Archivist of the United States considered the proposed amendment as expired based on the opinions of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel and other authorities, as the amendment contained a ratification deadline.
The four other amendments are still technically pending, as all four lack ratification deadlines. In 1810, Congress proposed a Titles of Nobility Amendment to the states, which removed a person’s citizenship if they accepted a title of nobility from a foreign power without the consent of Congress, expanding upon the current Titles of Nobility prohibition in the Emoluments Clause. The amendment fell two states short of ratification in 1816.
The Child Labor Amendment was proposed in 1924 and gave Congress the power to regulate all labor laws applying to people under the age of 18. So far, 28 states have ratified the amendment.
The Corwin Amendment passed by Congress in 1861 was a final attempt for forestall the Civil War by allowing states to regulate “persons held in service,” essentially protecting the institution of slavery. Only five states ratified what could have become the 13th Amendment. But the actual 13th Amendment ratified in 1865 had the direct opposite effect of abolishing slavery.
Finally, in 1789, the first amendment listed in the Bill of Rights—which consisted of 12 original amendment proposals—that was sent to the states would have defined the number of members in the House of Representatives based on regional population. It fell one vote short of ratification in 1791. If enacted today, the House of Representatives would have 6,000 members. Ten of the other proposed amendments were ratified and became what we know today as the Bill of Rights; the second unratified amendment was the one that eventually became the 27th Amendment.
Scott Bomboy is the editor in chief of the National Constitution Center.
