Can the States be taxed by the Federal Government in the US Article 1 section 2 paragraph 3 states that representatives and taxes may be assigned to each state based on their population. So this might be the answer to my question. But there are several examples of case law involving the 10th amendment where states sue because some of their activities are taxed. Would a federal tax plan that simply took the amount required to run the government and divided that amount across the states based on population and directly charged the states likely to survive a legal challenge? I have tried to find examples of direct taxation of the states and can't find any so I would also be interested in knowing if this was ever attempted and if so why the practice was abandoned.
Short Answer Would a federal tax plan that simply took the amount required to run the government and divided that amount across the states based on population and directly charged the states likely to survive a legal challenge? A federal tax plan along these lines is expressly authorized by Article I, Section 9, Clause 4 of the United States Constitution, but the federal government has never actually imposed taxes on this basis. But, this has never actually been done because there is no practical way to enforce an obligation of a state to pay a capitation tax. It has also not been done because it is politically unpopular with members of Congress from states that have a lower per capita income whose support would be necessary to pass such a tax. This is because a tax effectively imposes a higher tax rate relative to ability to pay on poor states than it does on more affluent states and there has always been a significant disparity between more affluent and less affluent states in the United States). For example, Massachusetts, the U.S. state with the highest per capita GDP ($65,545 in 2018) has more than twice the per capita GDP of Mississippi ($31,881), but would pay the same tax per capita, and, the District of Columbia, which would owe nothing under an Article I, Section 9 capitation tax had a per capita GDP of $160,472 in 2018. Instead, until the income tax was expressly authorized constitutionally in 1913, the federal government was financed mostly with customs duties and to a lesser extent some select excise taxes (also here and here), with several exceptions, some direct property taxes from 1789 to 1802; a short lived Civil War era income tax on the very affluent (1861-1872), which was reimposed briefly from 1894-1895 before being declared unconstitutional; and some estate taxes, either on the theory that they were excise taxes, or in parallel to the income taxes, until the 16th Amendment's authorization of the federal income tax was found to extend to authorization for federal gift and estate taxation. As noted here from 1789 to 1860: Customs duties as set by tariff rates up to 1860 were usually about 80–95% of all federal revenue. Thus, customs duties were as dominant a source of revenue for the federal government for roughly the first third of the history of the United States, as income and payroll taxes are today. I have tried to find examples of direct taxation of the states[.] While what you mean is clear, to avoid confusion, it is important to understand that the phrase &quot;direct taxes&quot; is used in the U.S. Constitution to mean taxes that are imposed directly upon individuals, businesses and private property. The &quot;direct taxation of the states&quot; to which you refer is a form of indirect taxation. Long Answer Sources Most of the discussion in this answer which are not specifically referenced with links or citations to the United States Constitution, is based upon a political science textbook entitled &quot;Congress&quot; that I used in college, an introductory federal income taxation textbook I used as a law school student, and an estate taxation textbook that I used to teach estate taxation when I was a professor for a financial planning program for master's degree students. All are hard copies for which no internet link to the materials themselves is available. Applicable Constitutional Law The United States Constitution (which took effect in 1789) has several provisions related to the federal government's power and the power of the states, respectively to impose taxes: Article I, Section 8, Clause 1 states: The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States; Imposts and duties are taxes on imports into the United States, while excises are “taxes on the manufacture, sale, or consumption of goods, or upon licenses to pursue certain occupations, or upon corporate privileges[.]&quot; Among the taxes that aren't &quot;imposts, duties or excises&quot; are income taxes, payroll taxes, gift taxes, estate taxes. For constitutional purposes, payroll taxes, gift taxes, and estate taxes are considered forms of income taxes. It isn't entirely clear if a general sales tax of the kind adopted by most U.S. states, or a value added tax, is a constitutional excise tax or income tax, as this question has never been tested (such taxes, when collected in the District of Columbia or Puerto Rico or the Virgin Islands by &quot;local governments&quot; fall under the power of the federal government to govern federal territory rather than the taxation power of Article I, Section 8, Clause 1 and the 16th Amendment). Until 1802 (i.e. for the first 13 years of the current constitution), Congress imposed what amounted to property taxes of various kinds under its excise tax power, but the constitutional validity of these taxes has never been established definitively before they were repealed and those taxes have never been reinstated. Imposes, duties and excises could be imposed directly by the federal government on private citizens, so long as they were uniform, while &quot;taxes&quot; prior to 1913, were subject to Article I, Section 9, Clause 4 discussed below. Article I, Section 9, Clause 1 of the U.S. Constitution which was in effect until 1808 when importing slaves was banned stated that a customs duty could be imposed on imported slaves: The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a Tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person. Article I, Section 9, Clause 4 of the U.S. Constitution states that: No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or Enumeration herein before directed to be taken. The only &quot;tax&quot; other than imposts, duties and excises that could be imposed by the federal government at uniform national rates prior to 1913, was a &quot;capitation&quot; tax imposed directly upon state governments, in proportion to the most recent census. But, no such such capitation tax was ever imposed upon the states. Congress clearly had and still does have the power to impose such a tax, but it didn't and it still doesn't, for political reasons and for reasons of the enforceability of such a tax. Wikipedia notes that: The United States government levied direct taxes from time to time during the 18th and early 19th centuries. It levied direct taxes on the owners of houses, land, slaves and estates in the late 1790s but cancelled the taxes in 1802. And, none of these direct taxes were capitation taxes. The main reason that this wasn't done is that even though these kinds of taxes were mandatory under the Constitution of the United States adopted in 1789, unlike the 1776 Articles of Confederation which did not have any enforcement mechanism to make states pay their share, enforcement of a capitation tax on states was still impractical in reality. This is because state governments do not have income or property that is amenable to being seized for payment of taxes in a manner that prevents mass chaos from breaking out (e.g. if the federal government tried to seize a state capitol building or court house for failing to pay its federal capitation tax). Instead, the premise of a capitation tax is that states will use their taxation power to impose taxes upon their citizens, businesses and the private property in their jurisdiction and then would hand over some of those tax receipts to the federal government until the state's quota for the year, set by Congress, was met. But, since there is no really viable democratic way for a federal court to direct a state legislature to impose and collect any particular kind of taxes to raise those funds, this nominally mandatory tax obligation of the states was economically and legally impotent, and was still mandatory in name only. The other problem with a capitation tax is that for almost all of the time period prior to 1913, there was a great disparity between the per capita GDP of the various U.S. states. For the vast majority of that time period, the commerce and industry of the north (powered to a great extent by hydro power prior to the widespread adoption of coal as a fossil fuel) produced much higher GDP per capita than the agricultural economies of the South, particularly because the infamous &quot;three-fifths compromise&quot; that gave the South Congressional representation based in part upon the number of slaves who lived there (30% or more of the population of many states) did not apply to capitation taxes. After the Civil War, what little commerce, industry and infrastructure that the South had had going in the war was massively degraded, and the population of able bodied men of prime working age was greatly reduced, rendering the South even more poor relative to the North. Even in the heyday of Reconstruction, capitation taxes were not imposed because it was obvious that the South could not afford to pay any significant share of its obligations on that basis. Thus, the South was mostly poorer per capita to start with, and had a higher share of capitation taxes than it did of Congressional seats and electoral votes, which was not a recipe for building Congressional support for a major new tax. Because some Southern political support was necessary to impose new taxes for most of U.S. history and because capitation taxes demanded more taxes relative to ability to pay from Southern states than from Northern one (as customs taxes already did to a lesser extent), these taxes never had the political support needed to be adopted by Congress. Article I, Section 9, Clause 5 of the U.S. Constitution states that: No Tax or Duty shall be laid on Articles exported from any State. So custom's duties can be imposed on imports of goods to the United States, but not on exports of goods from the United States. This isn't a big deal today, where only a tiny portion of federal revenues come from customs duties, but it was a big deal prior to the U.S. Civil War. Historically, this limitation was enacted mostly to prevent the North from burdening the export oriented cash crop agriculture (mostly tobacco and cotton) of the Southern states. Article I, Section 10, Clause 2 of the U.S. Constitution states that: No State shall, without the Consent of the Congress, lay any Imposts or Duties on Imports or Exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for executing it's inspection Laws: and the net Produce of all Duties and Imposts, laid by any State on Imports or Exports, shall be for the Use of the Treasury of the United States; and all such Laws shall be subject to the Revision and Control of the Congress. Many people are surprised to learn that states have a right to impose both import and export duties. But, since they can collect no more than the cost of carrying out their inspection laws and must turn the balance of any such revenues over to the federal government, there is no incentive for states to have significant taxes of this type. The &quot;weigh stations&quot; found on major highways for large trucks, which are mostly used to gather data used to allocate registration fees for trucks among the states based upon economic reality, are the main practical residuary impact of this constitutional provision. The 16th Amendment to the United States Constitution ratified in 1913 states that: The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration. The power of Congress to impose federal income and payroll taxes encompasses employees of state and local governments, as well as private sector employees, even though this means that state and local governments have to file federal withholding tax returns on a regular basis. But, state and local governments are not taxed on their own income (just like other non-profits) and state and local governments are allowed to establish state and/or local employee retirement systems in lieu of FICA taxation on its employees for employees who participate in those programs. State and local governments are also not subject to FUTA (federal unemployment taxes). FUTA taxes are in any case de minimis because state unemployment taxes are a credit against federal unemployment taxes dollar for dollar except for a very small minimum per employee FUTA tax (0.6% of the first $7,000 per year of wages for each employee, for a maximum FUTA tax of $42 per year per employee in most cases), because state unemployment taxes are almost always higher than federal FUTA taxes. Historically, some tax policy makers believed that it was unconstitutional to tax interest from municipal bonds (a.k.a. bonds issues by state and local governments) for federalism reasons. But, case law starting in the late 20th century established that the exclusion of municipal bond interest from taxation is strictly a statutory feature of the Internal Revenue Code and does not have a constitutional dimension. In other words, it is constitutional for the federal government to tax all income derived from municipal bonds, even though it declines to do so for municipal bonds that meet a variety of federal tax law tests. The History of U.S. Taxation From 1789 until 1860, the tax revenue of the United States government (as opposed to the states) came predominantly from customs duties on imports and from some select excise taxes (e.g. on alcohol), and in into the mid-1800s with revenues from federal property such as grazing rights and mineral rights, and federal enterprises (mostly the U.S. Postal Service and profits from manufacturing coins and currency). During the U.S. Civil War, the scope of federal government activities grew dramatically and these were ultimately paid for with an income tax and an estate tax were imposed briefly over constitutional objections but were repealed shortly thereafter, with increased customs duties and excise tax rates, and with confiscation of Confederate property. (The timing was financed with Treasury bonds issued to support the war.) After the Civil War the scope of U.S. federal government activity returned to pre-war levels, and only started to ramp up again with the Progressive era in the early 1900s followed by World War I, which were financed with the newly authorized federal income tax and an estate tax, at quite low rates by modern standards. Per the same Wikipedia link referenced above: Until a United States Supreme Court decision in 1895, all income taxes were deemed to be excises (i.e., indirect taxes). The Revenue Act of 1861 established the first income tax in the United States, to pay for the cost of the American Civil War. This income tax was abolished after the war, in 1872. Another income tax statute in 1894 was overturned in Pollock v. Farmers' Loan &amp; Trust Co. in 1895, where the Supreme Court held that income taxes on income from property, such as rent income, interest income, and dividend income (however excepting income taxes on income from &quot;occupations and labor&quot; if only for the reason of not having been challenged in the case, &quot;We have considered the act only in respect of the tax on income derived from real estate, and from invested personal property&quot;) were to be treated as direct taxes. Because the statute in question had not apportioned income taxes on income from property by population, the statute was ruled unconstitutional. So, income taxes had been adjudicated by the Courts to be unconstitutional from 1895 to 1913. Federal income tax withholding taxes are younger than the federal income tax which initially applied with any bite only to very high income individuals (rhetorically, if not mathematically, the equivalent of today's &quot;one percenters&quot;), although the income tax base had widened greatly by the end of the New Deal through World War II and its aftermath. The U.S. federal government didn't begin to approach its modern scale of activity until the New Deal following the Great Depression in the 1930s, which was financed with very high income taxes and estate taxes, high customs duties such as the Smooth-Hawley tariffs imposed not long after the crash of 1929 (which were so high that they reduced customs revenue rather than increasing it), and newly imposed payroll taxes. Information tax return reporting (the infamous Form 1099), which dramatically improved income tax collection rates beyond mere wage and salary withholding, was a late 20th century innovation that was adopted based upon the recommendation of free market economist Milton Friedman. Since the 16th Amendment was adopted, the federal income tax (and later federal payroll taxes on certain kinds of income) became the dominant source of income in short order, with customs duties and excise taxes and other forms of government rents and enterprise income (including income from the Federal Reserve also created before the New Deal in the early 1900s) came to be comparatively insignificant sources of income for the federal government. One notable exception was that the excise tax on gasoline and other petroleum based fuels, established as a de facto users fee and significant source of revenue to finance the Interstate State Highway system starting in the Eisenhower Administration, did create a significant source of new excise tax revenues. Federally owned oil and gas mineral interests also became a much more important source of federal revenues after World War II. The automobile had been invented and entered mass production in the early 1900s, but just as the internal combustion engine started to prevail over electric cars at that time and mass production took hold with Ford's Model T bringing some cars and trucks into upper middle class households and into use by businesses and farms, the Great Depression and World War II dramatically reduced private personal consumption, so for the two decades from about 1929 until the several years after World War II that it took to convert factories from war production to civilian peacetime production, the automobile industry's private sector sales were greatly suppressed, domestic civilian road and bridge construction came to a near halt during World War II as government funds were diverted to the war effort, and domestic oil consumption was likewise suppressed. Footnote On Collecting Debts From State And Local Governments In General The same issue comes up at the state level when a court awards a money judgment against a state or local government with taxing power, or holds that a state government has insufficiently funded education as required by a state constitution. Generally, in those cases, a legislative body has to authorize the appropriation &quot;voluntarily&quot; from whatever source of funds it choses to impose, and usually, when push comes to shove, state and local governments do pay the judgments they owe (there are limited federal bankruptcy options for municipalities and states), although there are instances of state governments stubbornly refusing to take the actions necessary to comply with court orders directing that public schools be funded for many, many years. For the most part, however, because enforcing debts against state governments is so difficult, transactions are structured as much as possible to prevent the need to enforce debts in that way through (1) legal limitations on governmental liability, (2) legislative budget rules requiring interest on debt and currently due principal payments to be made first, (3) third-party bonding of state and local governmental construction projects, (4) the creation of publicly owned corporations whose debts can only be collected out of the corporation's assets and revenues, and (5) avoidance of trade credit obligations by paying bills in cash. In connection with the legal limitations on liability, it is also worth noting that, as a general rule, state governments cannot be sued for money damages in any federal court other than the U.S. Supreme Court without their permission, and cannot be sued in the U.S. Supreme Court except by the United States government or another state government or perhaps by another country. So, when a money judgment is entered against a state government (which does not include local governments for this purpose) this happens only with multiple layers of state government consent to the process and the exact source and timing of the appropriation to pay it. When push comes to shove, as they did in California a few years back when it couldn't make payroll, it forced its employees and creditors to accept IOUs in lieu of cash payments, and while they may not have the legal right to do so, they have the economic power to force people to ignore that right.
The comments have basically covered this, but: It's a slightly weird parallel structure ("who shall not be at least 25, and been a citizen for 7 years, and who shall not be a resident"). The Constitution is not written in fluid 21st-century English. But the obviously correct way to parse the sentence is that no one can be a representative who isn't a 25-year-old or older who's been a citizen for at least 7 years; furthermore, no one can be a representative who wasn't a resident of the state they represent when they were elected. With some parts of the Constitution (like the Second Amendment), the drafting results in actual disputes about the intended meaning. With other parts (like here), only one reading makes any sense. It's the same with the requirements to be President. The Constitution says "No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President," which could be read as "you're not eligible unless, when the Constitution was adopted, you were either a citizen of the US or a natural-born citizen." But that's a silly reading, so "at the time of the Adoption" is read as only applying to "a Citizen of the United States:" natural-born citizens are eligible period, and people who were born before the US was a thing but were citizens by the time the Constitution was adopted were grandfathered in.
This is an open question in Colorado, where there's an ongoing challenge to the state's supermajority requirement in Kerr v. Hickenlooper. The state requires a supermajority for tax or spending increases, and several lawmakers challenged the law as violating the Guarantee Clause, which guarantees each state a republican form of government. The case has been going on for a long time. It's about seven years old now, and they're still arguing about who has standing to bring the lawsuit. The latest development is that no one had standing, but that decision is currently being appealed in the Tenth Circuit. A bigger problem than standing, though, may be justiciability. In Huddleston v. Sawyer, the Supreme Court of Oregon, rejected a challenge to supermajority requirements for reducing citizen-approved sentences for crimes, and in Lefkovits v. State Board of Elections, the Northern District of Illinois did the same with respect to judicial retention votes. Both courts concluded that supermajority requirements were a political issue, not a legal one. The justiciability concerns should be tempered by two considerations. First, there's an argument in Kerr that because taxes and spending are such core legislative functions, that it should be harder to uphold restrictions on the legislature's ability to vote on them. Second, there's U.S. Supreme Court precedent in New York v. U.S. suggesting -- but not deciding -- that the questions about justiciability are overblown: The view that the Guarantee Clause implicates only nonjusticiable political questions has its origin in Luther v. Borden, in which the Court was asked to decide, in the wake of Dorr's Rebellion, which of two rival governments was the legitimate government of Rhode Island. The Court held that “it rests with Congress,” not the judiciary, “to decide what government is the established one in a State.” ... Over the following century, this limited holding metamorphosed into the sweeping assertion that “[v]iolation of the great guaranty of a republican form of government in States cannot be challenged in the courts.” This view has not always been accepted. In a group of cases decided before the holding of Luther was elevated into a general rule of nonjusticiability, the Court addressed the merits of claims founded on the Guarantee Clause without any suggestion that the claims were not justiciable. More recently, the Court has suggested that perhaps not all claims under the Guarantee Clause present nonjusticiable political questions. ... We need not resolve this difficult question today. My money says that the question is not authoritatively answered in my lifetime.
Yes and No. The Federal U.S. Government as well as each individual state and territory claim Soverign Immunity to a limited degree. In the case of Federal Government, they claim Soverign Immunity to a near limitless degree (more on this in a moment), while States and Territories claim &quot;State Soverign Immunity&quot; which grants them immunity with respect to all soverign powers granted under the U.S. Constitution. To clarify, each U.S. State is seperately soverign in all matters not explicitly allocated to the Federal Government by the U.S. Constitution and all constitutionally written laws. Where the Constitution does not in writing claim a power for the federal government nor reserver a power for the state government, the power is assumed to be state government. So a State can claim immunity for a police situation but not a law it makes regarding immigration or foriegn policy, since that is the exclusive wheelhouse of the Feds. Per the 11th amendment, states can only be sued in state court by citizens of the state, while non-state citizens wishing to sue a state must sue in the Federal Court (Which for the purposes of the trial may adopt the defendant State's laws and regulations for the purposes of questions of fact and law brought up in the suit). All U.S. States and the Federal Goverment additionally wave Soverign Immunity under specific conditions outlined in laws. In the case of the Federal Government, the laws governing when this immunity is waived are governed by the Federal Torts Claims Act (1946) and the Tucker Act (1887). The FTCA covers intentional torts by the Federal Government, while the Tucker Act typically covers matters related to contractual obligations or monitary interactions with the federal government. Things that may be sued for include but are not limited too: Intentional Torts committed by Government Agents in their Official Capacity (i.e. When the FBI violates your rights or maliciously investigates you). Contractual disputes where the Government is a party to the Contract, either in written or implied terms. Constitutional Claims (i.e. The Government may have violated the Constitution. These tend to be for non-monitary relief such as mandemuses, though the 5th Amendment's Taking Clause can be invoked of the government took property and does not justly compensate.). Individual Agencies of the Government when the monitary claim is not drawn from the U.S. Treasury (the agencies own allocated budget is used to pay). Refund for taxes paid In all cases, a Judge will determin if the Government, under the laws, can be sued. If in the example of a government employee being sued, the Justice Department will first make a determination if the employee was acting as an agent of the government when they committed the tortious act, and then will declare themselves Respondent Superior through the agency of employement. From there, the case becomes a suit against the Federal Government and FTCA immunity waiver is determined by a Judge. For example, lets say you (Mr. Rapt) sue Special Agent Jimmy Jones of an intentional tort that he committed in the course of his duty as an FBI agent. The DOJ will first declare that they are Respondent Superior in the case of Rapt v. Jones, thus turning the case to Rapt v. United States Government, Department of Justice, Federal Beura of Investigations, and Jones (Rapt v. United States, et. al.). From here, the Judge who gets the case then determins if the U.S. Government under FTCA can be sued by Rapt, based on Rapt's citizenship status (usually permanent legal residents are covered as citizens for this point, but I can say for certain in this particular law), ripeness (the suit must be filed within 2 years of the incident or first knowledge), and immunity waiver under FTCA. In the case of the State Government, they should have similar laws, but I'm not going to identify all 50 individual laws here. Additionally, the 11th Amendment permits U.S. Congress to waive a State's immunity to suit in certain cases (mostly comes up with the Due Process Clause in the 14th Amendment.). As a fun point, in all cases where a government appears as a defendant in a suit, it is automatically a Bench Trial, as the government usually include a waiver of their right as defendant to a jury trial. The thinking here is that, as a country that was founded by rebelling against the government, a jury of 12 of the government's citizens aren't going to give them any slack at trial, where as a judge (who they pay) is much more likely. TL;DR: Both questions are yes. The immunity is waived under federal law for certain cases, but it is a judge who will make the ruling if the specific case meets the aformentioned waived immunity.
Nothing will happen. Wait for the 2030 census and January 3rd 2033. Representatives are only recalculated after each census. The last census and recalculation was 2020. So no ordinary recalculation will happen till 2030. It's unclear if there could be an extra census, which then might lead to redistricting - the only rules (in the constitution) I can find are, that a census has to happen every 10 years. Current laws are, that it happens every 10 years. It's up to politics to introduce laws to allow an extra census, but to make it that obvious that it is needed, there needs to be an exodus/death toll of the scale of the black death in Europe (one in 4 dies/moves) or a total depopulation of an area like New York City. Which has 8 million inhabitants, something like 10 districts, and is growing. Back in 1918 H1N1 killed between 2% and 10% of those that got it and in total about 675,000 (of 103.2 million) in the US, mainly in cities that did lag in their reaction to the fall/winter wave in 1918. As three (not fully) random examples: Philadelphia lost 16000 for something around 941 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants (the town had about 1.7 million inhabitants at the time), LA had a death toll of only 494 per 100,000, all of Nebraska lost between 2800 and 7500 people on a population of 1.3 million - for - for between 200 and 580 deaths per 100,000. Yet despite this very disparate impact it barely impacted the 1920 census. Not even the hurricane Katrina, which pretty much wiped out New Orleans, did not result in an extra census and restructuring - so it is very unlikely to happen. On the other hand, there is a formula for assigning representatives. We use the same setup since the 1940 census. Legal basis? 2 USC §2b dictates each state gets at least one: Each State shall be entitled, in the Seventy-eighth and in each Congress thereafter until the taking effect of a reapportionment under a subsequent statute or section 2a of this title, to the number of Representatives shown in the statement transmitted to the Congress on January 8, 1941, based upon the method known as the method of equal proportions, no State to receive less than one Member. 2 USC §2c dictates how many representative districts exist and how many representatives it will have: In each State entitled in the Ninety-first Congress [1969] or in any subsequent Congress thereafter to more than one Representative under an apportionment made pursuant to the provisions of section 2a(a) of this title, there shall be established by law a number of districts equal to the number of Representatives to which such State is so entitled, and Representatives shall be elected only from districts so established, no district to elect more than one Representative (except that a State which is entitled to more than one Representative and which has in all previous elections elected its Representatives at Large may elect its Representatives at Large to the Ninety-first Congress). The Redistricting is State-Law - and there are roughly 5 types how it's done. So, one representative per district. One district per representative. District borders are to be redrawn based on the decennial census as demanded in Art. 1 §2 - where it is called Enumeration: The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct. The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at Least one Representative; [provisional numbers] When will redistricting take effect? Redistricting lags one term behind, and it will not fire or remove a representative from office, whose district is scheduled to vanish - or elect new people. That's because redistricting on the state level can only happen after the reapportionment of the seats has been handed out by the clerk of the House of representatives. Reapportionment has a deadline of 25th January the year after the census. That's after the house term starts. Since at that moment the districts are still in existence, the term of the current holder first needs to run out before the new districts take effect. So the district ceases to exist the same day they leave office on January 3rd. A good example would be New York: The 45th district was redistricted from the 43rd District and elected first for in 1944, and was redistricted back into the 43rd District after the 1950 census. It was last voted for in 1950, well before the results of the census were handed out and redistricting happened. So the district ceased to be the same day Daniel A. Reed left the office on January 3rd of 1953. The 28th Congressional District was established in 1823 and eliminated on January 3rd 2013 as a result of the 2010 census. The last election for its seat was - obviously - in 2010. As a result, any changes to the district map stemming from the 2020 census will take effect only on January 3rd 2023, and a massive depopulation showing in the 2030 census will have an effect only in the elections for the house that begins its term on January 3rd 2033.
Only with the approval of Congress. An agreement between states is called an "interstate compact" (a variety of existing compacts are listed in the link). The federal government can also unilaterally create an independent agency with authority in some states, but not others such as the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Appalachian Regional Commission. The relevant parts of the Constitution are Article I, Section 10, which states: 1: No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility. 2: No State shall, without the Consent of the Congress, lay any Imposts or Duties on Imports or Exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for executing it's inspection Laws: and the net Produce of all Duties and Imposts, laid by any State on Imports or Exports, shall be for the Use of the Treasury of the United States; and all such Laws shall be subject to the Revision and Controul of the Congress. 3: No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay. Also relevant are Article IV, Section 3, Clause 1: New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new State shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or Parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress. and Article V: The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.
No The Texas suit alleges that significant changes were made to the election rules in the various defendant states, and that these were not approved by the legislatures of those states, but were made by administrative or court decisions. It also claims that differences in local practice and polices made absentee or mail-in voting easier, or invalid votes less likely to be detected, in some counties than in others, meaning that voters in some parts of those states were treated differently than voters in other parts. Note that this theory has not yet been accepted, or in any way passed on, by SCOTUS. But even assuming that the theory were to be accepted, it would require, at most, strict adherence to the election statutes of each state, and that changes or variances be approved by the state legislature. It would have nothing to say about the actual content of the various state laws, unless those laws treated different parts of a state differently, in which case there would be an equal protection violation. The Electors clause, cited in this suit, gives to the legislature of each state the power to &quot;direct&quot; how electors are to be appointed. This is done through laws, statutes. The suit cites this clause as a source of authority, and nothing in it could be taken as suggesting a requirement of national uniformity in election law. I have not yet seen the response to this suit, if indeed one has been filed. It may be that a response would argue that the changes were, in fact, authorized by provisions of the various state laws granting authority to officials. No one knows how the Court will respond to this suit. But even if it were to rule for the plaintiff Texas, that would not impose a national standard, nor permit one state to challenge the provisions of the law of another. It might permit one state to challenge how well another state had applied its own law.
Paying taxes need not have any legal connection to citizenship or potential citizenship. There is no constitutional provision, or law, which limits taxation to citizens or those on a path to citizenship. Legal immigrants, those on visas, and indeed tourists, must all pay various taxes, including hotel taxes and sales taxes. Lawful immigrants who work in the US must pay federal and (in most states) state income tax, and I believe some undocumented immigrants pay Federal income tax as well. Many countries tax people who are not citizens, nor immigrants in line for citizenship, and this has been true far back in history. Indeed the Romans taxed pretty much every inhabitant of and visitor to the Roman Empire, most of whom were not Roman Citizens. Things haven't changed that much since. It might be argued on philosophical grounds that such people should not be required to pay taxes, or should not be required to pay certain specific taxes. But that is not the law at this time, and this forum is not for debating what the law should be.