Soon after the amendment's adoption by ballot measure at the general election on November 3, 1992, Bobbie Hill, a member of the League of Women Voters, sued in state court to have it invalidated.

Term Limits claimed that Amendment 73 was "a permissible exercise of state power under the Elections Clause".

Writing for the majority, Justice John Paul Stevens concluded: Finally, state-imposed restrictions, unlike the congressionally imposed restrictions at issue in Powell, violate a third idea central to this basic principle: that the right to choose representatives belongs not to the States, but to the people.

"[3] Justice Clarence Thomas, in dissent, countered: It is ironic that the Court bases today's decision on the right of the people to "choose whom they please to govern them."

Nothing in the Constitution deprives the people of each State of the power to prescribe eligibility requirements for the candidates who seek to represent them in Congress.