Similar to the Congress of the United States, state legislatures can impeach state officials, including governors and judicial officers in every state. In addition, the legislatures of the territories of American Samoa, Northern Mariana Islands, and Puerto Rico have impeachment powers. Impeachment describes the process through which the legislature may bring charges and hold a trial with a penalty including removal from office.
Some aspects of how impeachment is conducted in different states and territories different, however they all commonly follow the two-stage model used by the federal government of having a legislative chamber first vote to impeach an official before then holding an impeachment trial to determine whether to convict and remove that official.
Some aspects of how impeachment is conducted in different states and territories different, however they all commonly follow the two-stage model used by the federal government of having a legislative chamber first vote to impeach an official before then holding an impeachment trial to determine whether to convict and remove that official. This takes cues from the practice of impeachment in England. Like the federal government, most have their lower chamber of their legislatures hold the vote to impeach, and have the subsequent impeachment trial take place in the upper chamber of their legislatures. However, several states do differ from the convention of holding the impeachment trial in their upper chamber. In a reverse, in Alaska it is the upper chamber of the legislature that votes to impeach while the lower chamber acts as the court of impeachment. In Missouri, after the lower chamber votes to impeach, an impeachment trial is held before the Supreme Court of Missouri, except for members of that court or for governors, whose impeachments are to be tried by a panel of seven judges (requiring a vote of five judges to convict), with the members of the panel being selected by the upper legislative chamber, the Missouri State Senate. In Nebraska, which has a unicameral legislature, after the Nebraska Legislature votes to impeach, an impeachment trial takes place before the Nebraska Supreme Court. In addition to all the members of its upper chamber, the state of New York's Court of the Trial of Impeachments also includes all seven members of the state's highest court, the New York Court of Appeals.
Before the 2024 ratification of an amendment adding an impeachment clause to its state constitution, Oregon was the only state without impeachment.
There have been in excess of 140 impeachments of officials by state governments.
Offices that have been the subject of impeachments include:
Impeachment and removal of governors has happened occasionally throughout the history of the United States, usually for corruption charges. At least eleven U.S. state governors have faced an impeachment trial; a twelfth, Governor Lee Cruce of Oklahoma, escaped impeachment by one vote in 1912. Several others, including Missouri's Eric Greitens in 2018, have resigned rather than face impeachment, when events seemed to make it inevitable. The most recent impeachment of a state governor occurred on January 14, 2009, when the Illinois House of Representatives voted 117âÂÂ1 to impeach Rod Blagojevich on corruption charges; he was subsequently removed from office and barred from holding future office by the Illinois Senate on January 29.
There have been twenty-one impeachments of state governors (with one state governor having been thrice impeached, and two state governors having been twice impeached):
In addition to the aforementioned state governors, two governors of the Northern Mariana Islands territory have been impeached: Republican Benigno Fitial in 2013 (who resigned) and Republican Ralph Torres in 2022 (who was acquitted).
The National Conference of State Legislatures has observed that gubernatorial impeachment occurs relatively infrequently and has cited two factors it believed to be partially responsible for this: