Judge Toby Crouse of the U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas Guts the 1974 ‘Roe Rule’
The Kansas House voted 80-42 Thursday to call for an Article V Constitutional Convention, making Kansas the 20th state to join the effort and the first to act since President Trump endorsed the movement in September 2025. What cleared its path was not a change in votes but a federal court ruling that struck down a 50-year-old barrier designed to protect Roe v. Wade.
U.S. District Judge Toby Crouse, a Trump appointee, ruled in November that Kansas’s requirement of a two-thirds supermajority for Article V applications violated the Supremacy Clause. That provision was added in 1974 explicitly to block any convention that might ban abortion nationally. The Supreme Court overturned Roe in 2022. The procedural zombie lived on three more years—until Crouse killed it.
Article V provides two methods to amend the Constitution. The first, used for all 27 existing amendments, requires two-thirds of Congress to propose and three-fourths of states to ratify. The second has never been used: 34 state legislatures can bypass Congress and call a convention directly. Any proposals still require ratification by 38 states.
Convention of States Action, the organization driving this push, limits its resolution to fiscal restraints, federal power limits, and congressional term limits. Supporters argue the 38-state ratification threshold prevents a “runaway convention.” Critics from the John Birch Society to the ACLU warn that once convened, a convention cannot be controlled. Madison himself opposed a second convention to add a Bill of Rights, saying he would “tremble for the result.”
COS Action President Mark Meckler frames the movement as a mechanism to make Trump reforms permanent. “When we get to the Convention of States, we help preserve the president’s legacy,” Meckler told Just the News. “Doing away with the Department of Education would be reversed immediately by a Democrat administration. We want to write that into the Constitution.” Trump amplified the movement on Truth Social in September. Kansas is the first state to pass since. Disclosure: Meckler is CEO of Just the News’s parent company.
Twenty states down. Fourteen to go. Iowa, South Dakota, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Wyoming, Virginia, and New Mexico have passed resolutions in one chamber. Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Massachusetts are actively considering. Republicans control 28 state legislatures.
The Crouse ruling may matter beyond Kansas. States with similar supermajority requirements now face the same constitutional vulnerability. COS has a legal template. Historical precedent suggests Congress pays attention when states get close—in the early 1900s, 29 states applied for a convention on direct election of senators. The Senate capitulated and proposed the 17th Amendment itself rather than risk a convention it couldn’t control.
The question is no longer whether states will keep passing resolutions. It’s whether they reach 34 before political winds shift. Kansas just moved the nation one state closer to what Madison feared.
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