The Term-Limited States

The following table represents the 15 states that currently have term limits for legislators. They are ordered by the year of term limits' impact--the first year in which incumbents who were serving when the term limits measure was passed are no longer eligible to run for re-election.  At the bottom of the page is a table of states that had term limits in the past but no longer do (due to legislative or court action).

(a) Because of special elections, term limits were effective in 2000 for eight current members of the House and one Senator in 1998.
(b) The Nevada Legislative Council and Attorney General ruled that Nevada's term limits could not be applied to those legislators elected in the same year term limits were passed (1996). They first applied to persons elected in 1998.
(c) In California and Oklahoma, a legislator may serve a total of 12 years in the legislature during his or her lifetime. The total time may be split between the two chambers, or spent in its entirety in a single chamber. Before 2012, California's limits were six years in the assembly and eight years in the senate.
(d) In 2020, Arkansas voters approved a ballot measure that changed term limits to 12 consecutive years with the opportunity to return after a four-year break. Prior to that, term limits were set by a 2014 ballot measure that limited legislators to 16 years of service during his or her lifetime. Before 2014, limits were six years in the House and eight years in the Senate.

Consecutive vs. Lifetime Limits

Term limits may be divided into two broad categories: consecutive and lifetime. With consecutive term limits, a legislator is limited to serving a particular number of years in a chamber. Upon hitting the limit in one chamber, a legislator may run for election to the other chamber or leave the legislature. After a set period of time (usually two years), the clock resets on the limit, and the legislator may run for election to his/her original seat and serve up to the limit again.

With lifetime limits, on the other hand, once a legislator has served up to the limit, she/he may never again run for election to that office. Lifetime limits are much more restrictive than consecutive limits.

Term Limits Repeals

In two states, term limits have been repealed by the legislature. In another four states, courts have found term limits provisions to be unconstitutional. No court has struck down term limits on the merits of the law itself; rather, in all four cases, courts objected to the method by which the limits were enacted. In Massachusetts, Washington and Wyoming, the opinions were similar. In all three states, term limits were enacted as statutes, rather than constitutional amendments. The courts said that because term limits constituted a qualification for office, they must be spelled out in the state constitution, and a statute spelling them out was not constitutional. In Oregon, the state supreme court found that the initiative imposing term limits in that state violated the single-subject requirement for initiatives.

Resources

NCSL magazine article, "As Term-Limit Laws Turn 30, Are States Better Off?" (February 2021)