Which states rejected or rescinded ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment and when did they act?
Executive summary
Primary sources show the Sixteenth Amendment was declared ratified on February 3, 1913, after the required number of state legislatures approved it [1] [2], but contemporary and later documentary compilations record a small number of states that either recorded formal rejections or are listed as having “rejected” the amendment; the documentary record is inconsistent and the treatment of rejections and rescissions has been officially treated as a political question for Congress [1] GPO-CONAN-1992/pdf/GPO-CONAN-1992-7.pdf" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">[3] [4]. The sources provided do not offer a single, uncontested list with uniform dating, so the answer must report what each authoritative compilation actually records and where the record is ambiguous [3] [5] [4].
1. The baseline: when the Sixteenth Amendment became part of the Constitution
Congress proposed the amendment on July 12, 1909, and the Department of State and other official summaries record that the requisite three‑quarters of the states had ratified it and that it was formally accepted on February 3, 1913 [1] [2] [6], a date echoed in House and GPO materials that mark the amendment’s entry into the Constitution [2] [6].
2. Which states “rejected” the amendment in contemporaneous records
Published compilations of state actions list several states that are shown as having rejected the amendment in their legislative journals or department‑level tabulations: Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Utah are specifically listed in one Library of Congress compilation as having “rejected (and not subsequently ratified)” the amendment [5], and multiple authoritative compilations note Utah’s rejection on February 26 (the year is given as part of tabulated data in the documentary record) [3]. These entries in turn appear in secondary aggregations of amendment ratification histories [3] [5].
3. States that later changed position and late ratifications noted in the record
Some states that earlier registered rejection or delay later appear in the official record as having ratified the amendment many years later; for example, several compilations list later formal ratifications (or tabulated acknowledgements) for states such as Virginia, Alabama, Florida, Georgia and Louisiana in mid‑20th century decades—entries that reflect separate, later legislative actions recorded long after 1913 [5]. The House historical highlight on the amendment similarly emphasizes that the amendment secured the necessary thirty‑six states between 1909 and 1913 [6], underscoring that later state votes did not affect the amendment’s original adoption date.
4. Rescissions: did any states withdraw a ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment?
The documents provided make clear that the larger legal question—whether a state may rescind a ratification before an amendment becomes effective—has been treated as a political question for Congress to resolve and has been discussed in relation to other amendments [4] [7]. The Constitution Annotated notes examples where states attempted rescissions (naming New Jersey and Ohio) but discusses those examples in the context of the Fourteenth Amendment dispute and the broader doctrine, not as a neat catalogue specific to the Sixteenth Amendment [4]. The sources supplied do not show a clear, contemporaneous rescission of a Sixteenth Amendment ratification that changed Congress’s conclusion about adoption; in short, no authoritative source in the packet documents a successful rescission that altered the 1913 certification [4] [7].
5. How to reconcile inconsistent lists and why the record looks messy
Published ratification grids and historical essays compiled over decades rely on state legislative journals that vary in form and survive unevenly; as a result, some modern compilations flag a handful of state legislative “rejections” or delayed votes while also recording later corrective or symbolic ratifications—practices that produce apparent contradictions in retrospective lists [3] [5]. The Constitution Annotated and legal commentaries emphasize that when disputes over rejection or rescission have arisen historically, Congress and the political branches settled them—meaning that once Secretary of State certification and Congressional acceptance occurred for the Sixteenth Amendment, later contrary state notations did not reopen the question [4] [7].
Conclusion
The authoritative core fact is clear: the Sixteenth Amendment was accepted into the Constitution on February 3, 1913 [1] [2]. Contemporary compilations record a small set of states—most frequently Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Utah—as having recorded formal rejections in state journals, and they also record later state votes and symbolic ratifications in the mid‑20th century [5] [3]. The sources provided do not document any rescission that reversed the federal certification of the amendment, and they emphasize that such questions historically have been treated as for Congress and the political departments to resolve [4] [7]. Where the documentary record disagrees or is fragmented, those disagreements are reflected in the cited compilations rather than in a single agreed list.