New Hampshire committee hears hours of testimony on Article V measures, including HB 264 and HCR 3

Representative Jordan Uhlery, prime sponsor of HB 264 FN, told the House Committee on State-Federal Relations and Veterans Affairs that frequent constituent requests and a belief in states’ authority motivated his bill to regulate delegates to an Article V convention.

Why it matters: the measures touch the rarely-used Article V route for proposing constitutional amendments and raise practical and legal questions about how states may control delegates and about whether states should press Congress by applying for a convention.

Uhlery opened discussion by describing constituent pressure and a decade-long interest in using Article V to limit federal overreach. He framed HB 264 as a vehicle to allow states to instruct delegates and to penalize delegates who vote on amendments “not authorized by our legislature,” while pointing to the Supreme Court’s 2020 Chiafalo decision on faithless electors as precedent for state authority to bind delegates. “States have the absolute…