California lawmaker urges state to rescind all calls for constitutional convention

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (CN) — A California state senator on Monday called for the state to set aside all demands for a constitutional convention, arguing that doing so will protect people’s essential liberties.

Senate Joint Resolution 1 would rescind all of California’s calls for such a convention — seven of which have been issued from 1911 to 2023. State Senator Scott Wiener, a San Francisco Democrat, said in a statement that wiping the slate clean would protect people from right-wing efforts to use a constitutional convention to remove their protections.

“The damage a constitutional convention could do to Californians’ basic rights is off the charts,” Wiener said. “There are no guardrails once a constitutional convention has been triggered. Once it begins, extremists could easily hijack it and drive the convention to strip protections for women, LGBTQ people, workers, immigrants, or any number of other groups, while undermining democracy and locking in the power of the largest corporations on the planet.”

Article 5 of the U.S. Constitution provides a method for states to bypass Congress to amend the Constitution. Two-thirds of legislatures can call for a constitutional convention, where amendments could be proposed. The proposals would then advance to the states for ratification, with three-quarters of them needed to ratify the amendments.

Many calls for a constitutional convention focus on one subject. However, Wiener said the Constitution has no provision allowing limits to a convention. Once convened, it could amend any aspect of the founding document.

Additionally, Wiener said the Constitution has no rules on a convention’s membership, voting rights or representation by state.

This is a particular danger with a right-wing Congress that could create procedural rules favoring what Wiener called “extremists.”

“California should follow the lead of states like Oregon, New York, and Illinois and rescind our previous calls for a constitutional convention,” said Jonathan Mehta Stein, executive director at California Common Cause, in a statement. “We applaud Senator Weiner’s efforts with this legislation.”

Wiener pointed to over two dozen states issuing calls for a convention. Arguing that Republicans will control both houses of Congress at the outset of the Donald Trump presidency, Wiener said a constitutional convention could be used to destroy legal protections and liberties. He claimed that Trump in a recent interview appeared to call for rewriting the Constitution to remove U.S. citizenship from people if their parents aren’t citizens.

Trump in that interview confirmed that he intended to remove birthright citizenship on his first day in office. Questioned about how he’d get around the 14th Amendment, which guarantees that right, Trump said he’d potentially use executive action.

“California must do its part to prevent this chaos, and we must not allow our state’s previous calls for a constitutional convention to be co-opted by efforts to throw out the Constitution in pursuit of an extreme right-wing agenda,” the senator said.

A handful of organizations praised the senator’s resolution.

Indivisible CA: StateStrong, a coalition of Indivisible groups across the state, said in a statement that Wiener’s resolution is a significant effort to combat a “rogue Congress” from convening a constitutional convention.

Dora Rose, deputy director of the League of Women Voters of California, said in a statement that such a convention would put civil liberties and the country’s underlying values at risk. Her organization is sponsoring the joint resolution.

“A constitutional convention could be used to upend our democracy in a variety of ways that we would live to regret,” Rose added. “Rescinding California’s past calls for constitutional conventions is one step toward insulating us from emerging threats to our most fundamental rights and liberties."

According to Wiener, the Golden State wouldn’t be the first to rescind a formal call for a constitutional convention. New Jersey in 2021 and Illinois in 2022 voted to rescind calls for a convention limited to campaign finance reform, two of five states which initially called for such a convention.