Reading the Idaho Constitution

A lot of public argument in Idaho starts with someone saying "that's unconstitutional." Sometimes they mean the U.S. Constitution. Often they mean the Idaho Constitution, and just as often they have not read it. This lesson gives you the skills to check: how the document is laid out, how to cite it, where the official version lives, how to tell whether a section has changed and how to find out what courts have said about it.

It also explains why the Idaho Constitution feels so different from the federal one. If you have taken the site's course on reading the U.S. Constitution, you will recognize the basic structure of articles and sections. But the Idaho document was written a century later, by people with different worries, and it shows. Lesson 1 told the story of the 1889 convention. This lesson is about reading what they produced.

The map: a preamble and 21 articles

The constitution opens with a one-sentence preamble: "We, the people of the state of Idaho, grateful to Almighty God for our freedom, to secure its blessings and promote our common welfare do establish this Constitution." Then come 21 articles. The titles below are exactly as the Idaho Legislature's official site lists them.

Article	Title	What it covers, in brief
I	Declaration of Rights	Idaho's bill of rights (Lesson 3)
II	Distribution of Powers	Separation of powers, in one section
III	Legislative Department	The Legislature, how bills must be written, initiative and referendum
IV	Executive Department	Governor and the other six elected executive officers, vetoes
V	Judicial Department	Supreme Court, district courts, prosecutors
VI	Suffrage and Elections	Who may vote, secret ballot, recall, nonpartisan judicial elections
VII	Finance and Revenue	Taxation, uniformity, appropriations
VIII	Public Indebtedness and Subsidies	Limits on state and local debt and on lending public credit
IX	Education and School Lands	Public schools, school endowment lands, Board of Education
X	Public Institutions	State institutions, seat of government
XI	Corporations, Public and Private	Railroads, corporate charters, antitrust
XII	Corporations, Municipal	Cities and their police powers
XIII	Immigration and Labor	Hours on public works, child labor in mines
XIV	Militia	State militia
XV	Water Rights	Appropriation and priority (covered in a separate course)
XVI	Livestock	Laws to protect livestock from disease
XVII	State Boundaries	Idaho's name and borders
XVIII	County Organization	Counties, county officers, commissioners
XIX	Apportionment	Senatorial and representative districts
XX	Amendments	How the constitution is changed
XXI	Schedule and Ordinance	Transition from territory to state, 1889 ratification

A few patterns are worth noticing. The first five articles follow the familiar order of rights and then the three branches. The middle of the document (Articles VII through XIII) is mostly about money and economic power: taxes, debt, schools and school lands, corporations, labor. The end is housekeeping. Article XXI still contains instructions for an election held in November 1889, which tells you something important: Idaho rarely removes old text unless it has to.

How sections are numbered, and what the gaps mean

Each article is divided into sections numbered from 1. Most are short paragraphs, but there are variations you need to recognize.

Lettered sections

When an amendment adds a new section between two existing ones, Idaho often gives it a letter instead of renumbering everything. Article VIII has Sections 2A and 3A through 3E, covering things like the municipal bond bank, port districts, hospitals and airports. Article XVIII has a Section 4A on consolidating counties. Cite these exactly as written: Idaho Const. art. VIII, § 3A.

Numbered subsections

Some longer sections are broken into numbered subsections. Article III, Section 2, on the size of the Legislature and the redistricting commission, runs from subsection (1) to (6). Article I, Section 22, on crime victims' rights, lists ten numbered rights. Cite a subsection with parentheses: Idaho Const. art. III, § 2(4).

Missing numbers

Look at the official section lists and you will find gaps. Article IV jumps from Section 18 to Section 20. Article V has no Sections 21 or 22. Article X skips Section 6. Article XIII goes from Section 2 to Section 4. A gap usually means a section was repealed and the remaining sections kept their numbers so that court cases and statutes citing them would not be thrown off.

The Article XIII gap is a good example. The constitution as engrossed in 1889, printed in Volume 2 of the convention Proceedings and Debates, had a Section 3 requiring that "all labor of convicts confined in the state's prison, shall be done within the prison grounds," with an exception for state public works. That section is no longer in the official text. If you came across a reference to "Article XIII, Section 3" in an old newspaper or court case, you would need to know it no longer exists.

Headings are not part of the text

The official site shows a short heading for each section, such as "Unity of subject and title" for Article III, Section 16. Those catchlines help you navigate, but when you quote the constitution, quote the body of the section, not the heading.

How to cite the Idaho Constitution

The basic form is the name, the article in Roman numerals and the section number:

• General audiences: Idaho Const. art. III, sec. 16. In a news story, "Article III, Section 16 of the Idaho Constitution" is clearest on first reference.
• Legal style: Idaho Const. art. III, § 16. An Idaho State Bar article, for example, cites the victims' rights section as "Idaho Const. art. I, § 22."
• What you will see in court opinions: The Idaho Supreme Court has used several forms over the years. In State v. Guzman (1992) the court wrote "art. 1, § 17 of the Idaho Constitution," with an Arabic numeral for the article. You will also see Roman numerals, which is what the official text uses. They mean the same thing.

Two more rules keep you out of trouble. First, if you are quoting text that has since been amended, say so: "Idaho Const. art. VI, § 3 (1889)" or "as originally adopted." Second, when you cite the 1889 convention, cite the volume and page of the Proceedings and Debates (I. W. Hart ed., 1912), as Lesson 1 explains.

Where the official text lives

The official online text is maintained by the Legislative Services Office on the Idaho Legislature's website. Each article has its own page, and each section has its own address that follows a simple pattern: legislature.idaho.gov/statutesrules/idconst/ArtIII/Sect16/. Change the Roman numeral and the section number to reach any section.

Pay attention to one line on that page: "The Idaho Constitution is updated to the website July 1 following the legislative session." Constitutional amendments are voted on at the November general election. Article XX, Section 1 says that if a majority of the electors ratify an amendment, it "shall become a part of this Constitution." That happens when the vote is final, not when the website catches up. So for several months after a November election, the website can show text that is no longer current. In November 2026, for example, voters will decide HJR 4 (on Article III, Section 26) and HJR 6 (a new section in Article X). If either passes, check the Secretary of State's certified results and the resolution itself, posted on the Legislature's proposed amendments page, rather than assuming the website text is up to date.

Other copies, and why to be careful

The constitution is reprinted in many places: legal research sites, nonprofit sites, older printed manuals. Use them for convenience, but check any quote against the official site. Copies get stale, and old copies may still carry repealed language.

Annotations: finding out what a section means

The bare text rarely settles a dispute. To understand a section you usually need three more things.

1. Annotated code

The Idaho Code Annotated, published by LexisNexis "with the approval and under the direction of the Idaho Code Commission," includes a volume of "Constitutions, Territorial Acts, Federal Law, Tables." Under each constitutional section it lists court decisions that interpreted it, along with compiler's notes. The University of Idaho College of Law's research guide on the Idaho Constitution points out that the "Compiler's Notes" that follow each provision "reference prior versions," which is how you find out a section was amended and when. The printed set is available in law libraries and many county law libraries.

2. Court opinions

The Idaho Supreme Court posts its recent opinions on its opinions page. For older cases, free databases such as CourtListener let you search for a phrase like "art. III, § 16" and find every opinion that cites it. Lesson 10 walks through this process in detail.

3. History and commentary

The convention debates are the best source on original meaning. The University of Idaho guide also lists two book-length secondary sources: Dennis Colson's Idaho's Constitution: The Tie That Binds (1991), which describes and interprets the convention, and Donald Crowley's The Idaho State Constitution: A Reference Guide (1994). Treat books like these as a map to the primary sources, not a substitute for them.

How Idaho's constitution differs from the federal model

The U.S. Constitution is short and general. It sets up a national government of limited, listed powers and leaves most details to Congress. State constitutions start from a different premise. A state legislature already has broad general power, so a state constitution's job is largely to organize that power and limit it. Idaho's founders, who distrusted legislatures, railroads and distant officials, leaned hard into the limiting.

It is long and detailed

By our count of the official online text, the Idaho Constitution has 234 sections and about 25,000 words, including the section headings. Some of the detail is surprising. Article XVI orders the Legislature to protect livestock against "pleuro pneumonia, glanders, splenetic or Texas fever." Article VIII, Section 1 spells out how state debt must be authorized, repaid within twenty years and approved by voters, then adds that it does not outlaw transactions "that were legal on or before November 3, 1998." That kind of detail is why the constitution gets amended so often.

It imposes duties, not just limits

The federal Bill of Rights mostly tells government what it cannot do. Idaho's constitution also tells the Legislature what it must do. Article IX, Section 1 says "it shall be the duty of the legislature of Idaho, to establish and maintain a general, uniform and thorough system of public, free common schools." Article X, Section 1 says certain public institutions "shall be established and supported by the state." Article XIII, Section 2 says the Legislature "shall pass laws to provide for the health and safety of the employees in factories, smelters, mines and ore reduction works." These duty clauses have been the basis of major lawsuits, especially over school funding (Lesson 7).

It restricts how laws are made

Article III contains rules the federal Constitution never imposed on Congress. Section 16 requires every act to "embrace but one subject and matters properly connected therewith, which subject shall be expressed in the title." Section 19 bans local or special laws in more than 30 situations. Lesson 5 shows how to check a bill against these rules.

It spells out separation of powers

The federal Constitution implies separation of powers through its structure. Article II, Section 1 of Idaho's says it outright: the powers of government are "divided into three distinct departments," and no one in one department "shall exercise any powers properly belonging to either of the others, except as in this constitution expressly directed or permitted."

It has a plural executive

The president is the only elected federal executive. Article IV, Section 1 lists seven: "a governor, lieutenant governor, secretary of state, state controller, state treasurer, attorney general and superintendent of public instruction," each elected to a four-year term. The governor holds "the supreme executive power" under Section 5, but the attorney general and the superintendent answer to voters, not to the governor. The governor also has a power the president lacks: under Section 11, he may veto individual items in an appropriation bill.

It elects judges

Federal judges are appointed for life. Under Article V, Section 6, Idaho's five supreme court justices "shall be elected by the electors of the state at large" for six-year terms, and Article VI, Section 7 requires that supreme court and district judge elections be nonpartisan, with no party designation on the ballot.

It is easier to amend

Amending the U.S. Constitution normally takes two-thirds of both houses of Congress and ratification by three-fourths of the states. Under Article XX, Section 1, an Idaho amendment needs "two-thirds of all the members of each of the two houses, voting separately," and then ratification by "a majority of the electors" at the next general election. The governor plays no part. Section 2 requires that when two or more amendments are proposed, voters get to vote on each separately. Ballotpedia counts 185 legislatively referred constitutional amendments on Idaho ballots from 1892 through 2025.

It acknowledges federal supremacy

For all its independence, the Idaho Constitution starts by conceding the obvious. Article I, Section 3 declares that Idaho "is an inseparable part of the American Union, and the Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the land." Where the two conflict, the federal Constitution wins. Where Idaho's gives more protection, as Lesson 3 shows it sometimes does, the state version controls state government.