I was looking at my copy of the U.S. Constitution and found Article IV, Section 3. It states:
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This section would prevent a part of a state breaking away, or two or more states joining together to form a single state without the approval of the states involved and Congress as a whole.
However, it doesn’t address the question of a state selling land to another existing state. For example, suppose New York wanted to buy Newark from New Jersey (I can’t think of a reason why they’d want it, but just hypothetically…). I couldn’t find anything in the constitution to prohibit this. Could New York and New Jersey come to this arrangement on their own and make it legal?
It is apparently possible to do this. The board is too slow for me to search now, but there is another thread here somewhere about Missouri and Arkansas swapping some land, and in effect changing their borders with each other.
Tranfers of land between states does happen from time to time, although AFAIK, they don’t do it for monetary gain. I think Congress would probably frown on such a deal.
As an example, there’s a movement underway to transfer the town of Wendover UT to Nevada. Currently, the town of Wendover is sort of a slum next to the glittering metropolis of West Wendover NV. The reason is that gambling is not allowed in Utah, so Wendover gets far fewer tax revenues than the casino intensive West Wendover. They tried to get the Utah legislature to allow gambling in Wendover, but no go. The alternative is to move the state line.
Not sure exactly what the status is on this movement. Last I heard, they still needed Congressional approval.
IIRC it generally winds up in court. Examples, Missouri and Illinois and Kentucky and Indiana got into disputes when the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers changed course, because the state line was defined as the river channel. That’s why there’s a little sliver of Illinois on the west side of the Mississippi near Kaskaskia and a little sliver of Kentucky on the northern side of the Ohio near Evansville.
I also recall New York and New Jersey getting into an argument about a small island near Ellis Island, and it going to the Supreme Court when negotiations proved futile.
I’m sure if the two states could negotiate a transaction Congress would rubber stamp it.
New York and New Jersey have had disputes about several islands I believe.
There is currently some dispute between New Hampshire and Maine about an island in the river between them, as usual the real issue is which state gets the tax revenues.
I assume you mean, and all the responses have assumed you mean, that one state buys land from another state and takes over the government of that land. However, your question is whether a state can buy land from another state. Any state, subdivision of a state, firm, individual, etc. can buy land and take ownership of the land. Ownership of the land does not include government of the land.
As others have noted, many state boundaries are determined by rivers, and as the rivers meander sometimes islands are on a different side of the channel of the river. That has been the basis for much litigation. The same thing has happened to municipalities, and to bring up Illinois again, it happed in Peoria County due to the meandering of the Illinois River.
Locally where I live, the ci ty of Charleston bought land in another county (Daniel Island - you may be familiar with this land since the clay court championship is held on it). So, the cit y of Charleston owns it, but it is still in a different county than Charleston County, and the city merely owns it. It has no control over the law of that land or any other control of that land, other than ownership.
The city of Charleston also owned Cypress Gardens, situated about 20 miles from the city and, again, in another county. It received it as a devisee. A few years ago, it sold it to the local government.
Sure would be weird if governments exerted control over properties they owned in other states.
For example, that would make tenants of the Aspen Hills Apartments in Smyrna, GA; the Innsbrook Apartments in Durham, NC; the Sawgrass Apartments in Corpus Christi, TX all citizens of Alaska, since their landlord is the Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation.
So, do your business at the Tower Center II in East Brunswick, NJ; and take care of all your Christmas shopping at the Fiesta Mall in Mesa, AZ. Lord knows the tenants need your pennies – because it all gets funneled back to me!
Pennsylvania bought land to get access to Lake Erie. (Scroll about halfway down the page to Lake Erie Triangle) They got a pretty damn good deal, only .75 cents per acre!
So I guess West Virginia isn’t a valid state, since I’m pretty sure the Virginia legislature didn’t consent to the northwestern counties becoming another state.
I don’t know about the legislature part, but Virginia did give permission for WV to become a state. It just wasn’t the Virginia government that succeeded, but the reorganized one(by Union forces). And I believe the Supreme Court ruled on this issue as valid a few years later.
As to Ellis Island: originally, the border treaty between New York and New Jersey said that New York got Ellis Island, but New Jersey got the rest of the river. When Ellis Island became a huge immigration station, the federal government enlarged the island by dredging up a bunch of new land. At first, the whole expanded island was assumed to be part of New York. New Jersey, however, said that the part of the island that was dredged out of the river (which is most of the current island) belongs to them, since they own the river that the land was raised from. New York, of course, insisted that the whole island was theirs. SCOTUS sided with Jersey, so now only the small “original” part of Ellis Island belongs to New York.
Just speculating here…
The constitutional article quoted is designed to prevent the Federal government from dismembering or merging an already-existing State. This as a way of recognizing that the States, once duly constituted by the people thereof, are considered sovereign entities on their own right, and NOT creatures of Congress. I suppose then that in the absence of dispute two already existing states, as sovereign entities, could perform a land swap changing their borders, including a cash transfer for expenses and any possible “reparations”. Thing is, it’s almost certain that for anything larger than maybe one uninhabited sandbar somebody will claim his/her rights were violated and it will end up in court.
Well, I would argue that since the states are created under federal jurisdiction, this means that the feds define what’s in each state. The states can’t change federal law any more than you and i can. Right?
The federal government cannot define what is in each State. Theyc an excercise some power of the purse or pass national laws to try to coerce recalcitrant States. Likewise, a State can balk at Federal proposals and will handle most of their own affairs.
Yout start is flawed, though, since the States have been round much longer than the Federal Government. Niether the states nor the Feds can change one another’s jurisdiction.
That isn’t accurate. The disputed island is the home of the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard. It’s a federal shipyard on federally owned land. Maine has been extracting income taxes from NH workers as well as their spouses for 30 years. Since the territory has been in dispute for about 300 years, the NH Attorney General brought suit to prevent the state of Maine fom continuining to tax NH workers and their spouses until the border dispute had been resolved. The case went to the Supreme Court where the ruling went against NH despite ample documentation supporting the claim. If NH had won, no new tax revenue would have been generated for the state. It’s federal land, so there are no property taxes and New Hampshire is one of the few states where workers pay no income tax. You might argue that the dispute was about who has influence over naval operations, but NH already has more than ample say over which contracts are awarded to the shipyard. IMHO, the case was primarily about protecting NH residents from unfair taxation practices rather than which state the shipyard island belongs to. At least that was the strategy of the NH AG.