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Civic primer
State constitutions
The U.S. Constitution is not the only one that governs you. Every one of the 50 states has its own constitution — and most of them predate or parallel the federal charter. They are the supreme law within their state.
- Alabama ●
- Alaska ●
- Arizona ●
- Arkansas ●
- California ●
- Colorado ●
- Connecticut ●
- Delaware ●
- Florida ●
- Georgia ●
- Hawaii ●
- Idaho ●
- Illinois ●
- Indiana ●
- Iowa ●
- Kansas ●
- Kentucky ●
- Louisiana ●
- Maine ●
- Maryland ●
- Massachusetts ●
- Michigan ●
- Minnesota ●
- Mississippi ●
- Missouri ●
- Montana ●
- Nebraska ●
- Nevada ●
- New Hampshire ●
- New Jersey ●
- New Mexico ●
- New York ●
- North Carolina ●
- North Dakota ●
- Ohio ●
- Oklahoma ●
- Oregon ●
- Pennsylvania ●
- Rhode Island ●
- South Carolina ●
- South Dakota ●
- Tennessee ●
- Texas ●
- Utah ●
- Vermont ●
- Virginia ●
- Washington ●
- West Virginia ●
- Wisconsin ●
- Wyoming ●
How state constitutions differ from the federal one
- Older, and homegrown. Many state constitutions were written before or alongside the 1787 federal Constitution; states have since rewritten them entirely (Texas is on its seventh; Louisiana has had eleven).
- Much longer and more detailed. The U.S. Constitution runs about 7,600 words. State constitutions are typically tens of thousands of words — some, like Alabama's, run to hundreds of thousands — because they spell out the machinery of state and local government, finance, and specific programs.
- Amended far more often. The federal Constitution has been amended 27 times in over two centuries. Many state constitutions have been amended hundreds of times, often by direct vote of the people at general elections.
- They establish the state's own government. A state constitution sets up the governor, the legislature, the state courts, counties and cities, taxation and debt limits, public education, and a state bill of rights.
The Supremacy Clause — how federal and state law fit together
Article VI of the U.S. Constitution contains the Supremacy Clause: the Constitution, and the federal laws and treaties made under it, are "the supreme Law of the Land." Where a state constitution conflicts with valid federal law or the federal Constitution, the federal provision wins, and the conflicting state provision cannot be enforced.
But supremacy sets a floor, not a ceiling. A state constitution may grant its residents broader rights than the federal minimum — stronger privacy, speech, or due-process protections, for example. It simply may not grant narrower ones. So a right you have federally is guaranteed everywhere; a state can add to it, not subtract from it.
This is why a provision can sit in a state constitution yet be unenforceable — for instance, a state definition of marriage that conflicts with a U.S. Supreme Court ruling remains in the text but yields to federal law. CivicGate shows the text as written and notes where federal law overrides it.
Pick a state from the index to read its constitution — states with a ● have their full article-and-section text on CivicGate; the rest link through to the official source while we structure them.