Another person who celebrated victory in a tongue-in-cheek sort of way was former Montana state Rep. Matthew Monforton, who has since left the Republican Party, but had started an earlier conversation about term limits found in the Montana Constitution.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Montana Constitution Doesn\u2019t Care About Steve Daines\u2019 Ambition \u2014 And Neither Should Christi Jacobsen\u201d Monforton titled his post.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a provision sitting in the Montana Constitution that the political class has spent 30 years pretending doesn\u2019t exist. It\u2019s there in black and white. It imposes term limits on members of Congress. It has never been repealed. And now, for the first time, Montana has a Secretary of State who is also a candidate for Congress \u2014 meaning the official responsible for putting names on the ballot has both the authority and the constitutional duty to enforce it,\u201d he continued.<\/p>\n
This is the time of the season when conversations about Montana\u2019s term limits loom large \u2014 as\u00a0state politicians in the Legislature make a jump from one chamber to the other in order to avoid \u201cterming out.\u201d The state\u2019s Constitution sets specific amounts of time a person can serve in the Legislature. For example, House members are limited to eight years every 16-year period.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Monforton-screenshot-030926-249x300.jpg\")
A screenshot of a Facebook post by Matthew Monforton which sparked a conversation about term limits and the Montana Constitution.<\/p>\n
If few people read the Montana Constitution, even fewer probably notice Montana voters approved not just term limits for their state senators and representatives, but also on Montana\u2019s members of Congress. Those limits were added in 1992 by ballot initiative during a time when term limits were discussed as a way to stop a never-ending cycle where politicians were always fundraising and stumping for the next election.<\/p>\n
For members of the United States House of Representatives, the Montana Constitution limits a person to only six years during any 12-year period. For U.S. Senators, the limit is 12 years within a 24-year period.<\/p>\n
Using Article IV, Part 4, Section 8 of the Constitution, Daines should have never been eligible to file. And it\u2019s not the first time that such a scenario has played out. Jon Tester, who lost his Senate race in 2024 to current U.S. Sen. Tim Sheehy, was running for his fourth term. And longtime U.S. Sen. Max Baucus was already on his third term when voters passed the limit in 1992. He went on to win three more campaigns before becoming America\u2019s ambassador to China.<\/p>\n
But Article IV, Part 4, Section 8 is where part of the Montana Constitution meets the United States Supreme Court.<\/p>\n
In a very narrowly divided opinion, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote the 5-to-4 majority opinion in the landmark U.S. Terms, Inc vs. Thornton. That case, decided in 1995, said that it is up to the federal Constitution to outline the qualifications for members of Congress, and not the state\u2019s prerogative to decide the qualifications.<\/p>\n
The majority opinion stated that if the United States were to truly have a \u201cnational Legislature\u201d as conceived by the framers of the Constitution, that the selection criteria must be the same across states.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Constitution contains no express or implicit restriction on States\u2019 ability to impose additional qualifications on candidates for Congress,\u201d Stevens said. \u201cThe states have no authority to \u2018change, add to or diminish\u2019 the requirements for congressional service enumerated in the Qualifications Clauses.\u201d<\/p>\n
Monforton said it\u2019s not surprising that Montanans and most people still embrace the idea of term limits. What is often surprising is that it is that passage seems to be ignored.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s good reason for that, explains constitutional legal scholar Constance Van Kley, who teaches law at the University of Montana\u2019s Alexander Blewett III School of Law.<\/p>\n
When Montana voters approved the provision that placed term limits on both state and federal lawmakers, that was the legislation voters approved. It was added to the Montana Constitution. When the U.S. Supreme Court said individual states could not set term limits for Congress, it made the section moot. Van Kley explained that Montana\u2019s Constitution \u2014 just like other states or federal constitution \u2014 cannot be changed unless it\u2019s amended.<\/p>\n
In other words, the language will remain, even occasionally causing confusion because it may appear officials are not keeping track.<\/p>\n
Though rare, these type of ghost clauses can be found in other constitutional settings, even Montana.<\/p>\n
For example, Van Kley pointed out that Montana voters approved a constitutional amendment prohibiting same-sex marriage. That provision is still on the books, but when the U.S. Supreme Court decided the Obergfell case<\/a>, it rendered the same-sex marriage provision moot in Montana \u2014 even though the language will remain in the state\u2019s Constitution until someone amends it.<\/p>\n May not be settled <\/p>\n Though the term limits for federal lawmakers remain void \u2014 that may not be the case forever, Van Kley and Monforton said.<\/p>\n The concept of Congressional term limits still has a groundswell of support, even though no state has been able to successfully mandate federal term limits. A Pew Research poll that was published in 2023<\/a> shows that the concept of term limits may be even more popular today than when the concept began to be enshrined in the mid-1990s. That Pew report found that 87% of Americans still favor term limits.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd that\u2019s one of those things that has bipartisan support,\u201d Monforton said.<\/p>\n Ironically, it was Daines who was honored by the group, U.S. Term Limits, which brought the original 1994 challenge to the U.S. Supreme Court, as being a champion of term limits. Daines was honored in January 2025 for his support of term limits and legislation that would limit House members to three terms of two years; and Senate members to two six-year terms.<\/p>\n When the Daily Montanan contacted Daines\u2019 office last year to ask about that, his office clarified through a spokesperson that while Daines supports term limits, he was not imposing them on himself until the rules were changed for everyone.<\/p>\n