Texas governor joins GOP calls for constitutional convention

Abbott’s call for a constitutional convention follows that of Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio, who wrote in an op-ed that if elected president, “I will promote a convention of states to amend the Constitution and restore limited government”.

Require a seven-justice super-majority vote for U.S. Supreme Court decisions that invalidate a democratically enacted law.

Abbott, a staunch opponent of the Obama administration, most recently taking to Twitter to challenge the president on his executive action on gun control, accused the federal government of exercising more power than intended by the country’s founders.

Konni Burton, now a Republican state senator from Colleyville, told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram that year that such a convention could allow “anyone to offer up any number of amendments… based on their own ideology and interests, which could ultimately radically change our Constitution”.

Abbott’s speech before the Texas Public Policy Foundation in Austin could amp up the anti-federal dialogue across the nation, likely leaving Republican White House hopefuls plenty to dissect as the first primary votes are just weeks away.

Unlike other federal legislation, constitutional amendments do not require approval by the President. The sixth proposal seems to take direct aim at marriage equality, which Supreme Court granted in a 6-3 ruling that overturned state-level bans that had been, in many cases, added to state constitutions via citizen referenda.

Others, such as prohibiting administrative agencies from pre-empting state law, could easily be used to push back federal civil rights and equal protection laws, like the current efforts by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) that are codifying the belief that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 already protects LGBT citizens from discrimination.

Prohibit Congress from regulating something that only happens in one state.

That amendment says that “the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people”.

“8. Give state officials the power to sue in federal court when federal officials overstep their bounds”.

Allow a two-thirds majority of states to override a federal law.