Is there any legal way for a state to be expelled from the US? This is similar to my question about legal secession, but with one major difference. Is there any way a state could be expelled from the US without its consent? A Constitutional amendment could do this just as easily as one could allow a state to voluntarily secede, except that &quot;no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.&quot; If a state is removed from the Union, it obviously is not represented in the Senate. However, at this point, is it a state for the purposes of the constitution?
The Constitution does not describe such a method, and no one has ever tried to do so. During and immediately following the U.S. Civil War, states that attempted to secede from the U.S. to join the Confederate States of America were not represented in Congress until their insurrections ceased and a post-war government approved by the Union forces in the Reconstruction era was in place. But this was not on the theory that these areas had ceased to be states, it was on the theory that there was a vacancy in the positions because these areas had not held elections for the U.S. House of Representatives, had not nominated U.S. Senators, and were in degradation of the U.S. Constitution once the 14th Amendment was adopted (denying the right to serve in office to confederate leaders until Congress acted otherwise). Prior the 14th Amendment this denial of U.S. government representation was simply viewed as a function of practical reality and the war powers of Congress, and perhaps the &quot;invasion or insurrection&quot; and &quot;Republican government&quot; clauses of the U.S. Constitution. Certainly there is no recognized roadmap for doing so today.
In the US it is not a crime to be in the country illegally. As a general rule, it is not a crime for a removable alien to remain in the United States. Arizona v US So it's illegal, you get a state induced consequence (deportation) but it doesn't make you a criminal e.g. you don't go to jail for it. I have no idea if that's what's going on over there but it's a plausible explanation.
The general story is that one state does not have jurisdiction over an act carried out in another state. The Wiki on state gun laws claims that ownership in Illinois requires a permit, but the law is here, and in fact the law addresses possession and acquisition, but not ownership, for example 430 ILCS 65/2: No person may acquire or possess firearm ammunition within this State without having in his or her possession a Firearm Owner's Identification Card previously issued in his or her name by the Department of State Police under the provisions of this Act It is legally immaterial that the word "Owner" is in the name of the card. It is likewise claimed that Massachusetts requires a license to own a gun, but from what I can tell the requirements pertain to licenses to possess or purchase, and not just to own. So there seems to be no impediment to actual ownership in the US.
Technically, they were born in the United States, at least under US law, and the law of any existing nation. The United States never recognised the Confederacy, nor did any other country. There are occasional wingnut groups who declare themselves separate from the United States, but a simple declaration of secession does not create a country – you also have to win the war. The Supreme Court affirmed that the secessionist states were always an integral part of the Union in Texas v. White, 74 U.S. (7 Wall.) 700 (1869). Since they only had jurisdiction if Texas was a state at the relevant time (some time on or before January 15, 1865), by accepting the case, they implicitly affirmed that Texas was part of the Union. Further, in the judgement itself, they explicitly stated that the acts of secession of not just Texas, but every rebel state were “absolutely null”.
The true answer is this is fundamentally unclear and ratification would definitely set up for a Supreme Court showdown. The Supreme Court would in my opinion need to resolve 3 issues: Are Congressionally imposed deadlines in resolutions proposing an amendment to the States for ratification binding? Does a state withdrawal of its ratification of an amendment annul its ratification of the amendment? Who decides when an amendment is ratified? For the first question this is perhaps the most unresolved question. Clearly if the deadline is imposed in the text of the amendment it is binding. For example, see the text of the 18th amendment, Section 3. What is not clear is what if any binding effect a deadline in the text of the resolution proposing an amendment has as to the validity of the proposed amendment. Article V makes no provision on such deadlines. In fact the most recent amendment ratified was submitted for ratification on September 25, 1789, but ratified May 5, 1992. In this instance the Archivist of the United States declared the amendment ratified, but Congress also acted to do so and several members scolded the Archivist for doing so before Congress acted. However, there was no resolution of who had to actually approve the ratification. For the second question there is absolutely no answer to this question except Coleman v. Miller which suggests this is a political question. This essentially means that the question should be resolved by Congress, not the courts. Lastly, for the third question see also my response to the first question. If Congress is indeed the ratifier, what happens if one Congress decides the amendment was not ratified, but a future one decides it was? Honestly, ratification of the ERA would open a whole can of worms and make it difficult to really resolve this issue. Probably the most direct method to force the Supreme Court to rule on this issue would be someone challenging their requirements to register with the Selective Service System.
Citizens likely have an absolute right to enter the US. This hasn't been addressed directly by the Supreme Court, but here are some cases that come close. The Fifth Circuit, in William Worthy, Jr. v. US, 328 F.2d 386 (5th Cir. 1964): We think it is inherent in the concept of citizenship that the citizen, when absent from the country to which he owes allegiance, has a right to return, again to set foot on its soil. The Supreme Court, in Tuan Anh Nguyen v. INS 533 U.S. 53 (2001) said that conferring citizenship on a person would give "the absolute right to enter [the US]". This wasn't necessary for the holding in this case, which was about whether the person was a citizen, so this could be considered dicta. Fikre v. FBI, 23 F. Supp. 3d 1268 (D. Or. 2014). (not an appellate case) said: U.S. citizen’s right to reenter the United States entails more than simply the right to step over the border after having arrived there. At some point, governmental actions taken to prevent or impede a citizen from reaching the [border] infringe upon the citizen’s right to reenter the United States. Even if we assume that citizens do not have an absolute right to re-entry, the Equal Protection Clause likely bars a religion-based criteria for citizen re-entry. Citizens are protected by the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. This prohibits the government discriminating based on a suspect classification (race, religion, national origin) unless such law passes strict scrutiny. Without making a prediction about whether such a hypothetical statute could pass strict scrutiny, I'll go as far as I can and strongly guess that the government could not prohibit citizen re-entry to the United States based solely on their declared religion.
Technically, there is no such thing as an unconstitutional law. There are laws which have been passed, but whose unconstitutionality has not been discovered yet. But once a law is legally deemed to be unconstitutional, it stops being a law. The constitution is a recipe for running the government. If Congress enacts legislature which it has no authority to enact, the courts have the authority to discover this and reveal it in an opinion.
Article IV, Section 4 says this: The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government That would mean no state can be a kingdom. PS in response to comments: This section does not mean the federal government is guaranteeing to the states that the federal government will be republican in form; rather the federal government is required to guarantee that the state governments will be republican in form. That is done when Congress looks over a proposed state constitution before admitting a proposed new state to the Union. That has not always been done, since in particular it was not done in Kentucky. (On February 4, 1791, Congress passed an act saying the district of Kentucky in the state of Virginia would be admitted as a new state, of course with the consent of the Virginia legislature that had been expressed in 1789, but would not be admitted until almost 16 more months passed. The politicians of Kentucky had requested the long delay so they could use the time to negotiate compromises on details of their state constitution, which hadn't been written yet. That was the first time Congress passed a law admitting a new state, but because of the delay, Kentucky became the 15th state rather than the 14th (Vermont is the 14th).)