No, the Supreme Court cannot overturn a constitutional amendment. Once an amendment is properly ratified under Article V, it becomes part of the Constitution itself, and the Constitution is the document the Court draws its authority from and is sworn to uphold. Every time litigants have asked the Court to invalidate an amendment, it has refused, treating a ratified amendment as beyond judicial challenge.
Why an Amendment Sits Above Judicial Review
Article VI declares the Constitution “the supreme Law of the Land” and binds every judge in the country to it.1Library of Congress. U.S. Constitution – Article VI The Court’s power comes from that document. An amendment, once ratified, is not something separate that sits below the Constitution — it is the Constitution, carrying the same legal weight as any original provision.
That is what makes an amendment different from an ordinary statute. Congress passes laws under the Constitution’s authority, and those laws can be measured against constitutional requirements and struck down when they fall short. An amendment has no higher legal standard to be measured against. It occupies the top of the hierarchy alongside every other clause of the Constitution.
The Supreme Court’s own institutional description puts the relationship plainly: when the Court “rules on a constitutional issue, that judgment is virtually final; its decisions can be altered only by the rarely used procedure of constitutional amendment or by a new ruling of the Court.”2Supreme Court of the United States. The Court and Constitutional Interpretation Amendments override the Court. The Fourteenth Amendment overrode Dred Scott. The Nineteenth Amendment overrode the legal framework that had excluded women from voting. The direction of that authority runs one way.
The Court Has Been Asked to Strike Down Amendments and Said No
People have brought these challenges, and the results have been consistent.
In the National Prohibition Cases of 1920, opponents of the Eighteenth Amendment argued that banning alcohol went beyond what the amending power itself was allowed to do. The Court rejected the argument, holding that the Amendment “by lawful proposal and ratification, has become a part of the Constitution, and must be respected and given effect the same as other provisions of that instrument.”3U.S. Reports. National Prohibition Cases, 253 U.S. 350 The substance of the amendment, the Court said, was “within the power to amend reserved by Article V.”
A similar challenge followed the Nineteenth Amendment. In Leser v. Garnett (1922), opponents argued that certain states had ratified improperly and that state constitutions barred their legislatures from approving the amendment. The Court dismissed both arguments. A state legislature acting on a federal amendment, it held, performs “a federal function derived from the federal Constitution” that “transcends any limitations sought to be imposed by the people of a state.”4Cornell Law School. Leser v. Garnett, 258 U.S. 130 Once the proper officials certified ratification, that certification was “conclusive upon the courts.”
Together, these decisions draw the line. The Court will look at whether an amendment cleared Article V’s procedural bar. It will not second-guess whether the amendment was wise, fair, or too broad in reach.
What the Court Can Review: Ratification Procedure, Barely
Procedure is the one place the Court has any role at all, and even there the door is nearly closed. In Coleman v. Miller (1939), Kansas legislators challenged whether their state could still ratify the proposed Child Labor Amendment thirteen years after Congress sent it out. Chief Justice Hughes wrote that “the efficacy of ratifications by state legislatures . . . should be regarded as a political question pertaining to the political departments.”5Legal Information Institute. From Coleman v. Miller to Baker v. Carr Whether an amendment had been adopted within a reasonable time was a matter for Congress, not the courts.
Article V itself contains one permanent substantive limit that no amendment can override without consent: no state can be deprived of its equal representation in the Senate without that state’s agreement.6Legal Information Institute. Unamendable Subjects That restriction comes from Article V itself, not from any judicial power to police the content of amendments.
What the Court Can Do Instead: Reinterpret
The Court cannot strike an amendment down, but its power to say what an amendment means is substantial, and the practical effect can be dramatic. The words stay fixed. The reading of those words can shift across decades.
The Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause is the sharpest example. In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the Court read the clause to allow racial segregation under a “separate but equal” theory. Nearly sixty years later, in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), a unanimous Court held that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal,” and state-mandated school segregation became unconstitutional.7Legal Information Institute. Separate but Equal The text did not change. The Court’s reading of it did.
The Second Amendment shows the same pattern. Courts had long tied it to organized militia service. In District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), the Court held for the first time that the amendment “protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.”8Cornell Law School. District of Columbia v. Heller Same amendment, different practical reach.
This is the power that actually matters when people talk about the Court and amendments. The justices decide what the Constitution’s words require in practice, which is a good part of why appointments carry the political weight they do.
The Only Way to Undo an Amendment
If the Court cannot overturn an amendment, only one route remains: another amendment that repeals it. Article V sets the bar. Proposing an amendment takes a two-thirds vote in both the House and the Senate, or a national convention called by two-thirds of the state legislatures, a method that has never been used.9Library of Congress. U.S. Constitution – Article V Ratification then requires approval from three-fourths of the states, currently 38, either through their legislatures or through state ratifying conventions, with Congress choosing the method.
This has happened once. The Eighteenth Amendment banned the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcohol in 1919. Fourteen years later, the Twenty-First Amendment repealed it, making it the only constitutional amendment ever formally undone.10Constitution Annotated. Overview of Twenty-First Amendment, Repeal of Prohibition For that repeal, Congress directed the states to use ratifying conventions rather than legislatures, the only time that method has been used, on the view that state legislators were more sympathetic to prohibition than the general public was.
The high threshold is deliberate. Article V was designed so that the Constitution could not be rewritten by a passing majority or by any single branch of government. That same difficulty is what makes repeal rare, and it is why the answer to the original question stays firm: the way to change a ratified amendment is another amendment, not a Supreme Court decision.