221 U.S. 559 (1911), argued 5–6 Apr. 1911, decided 29 May 1911 by vote of 7 to 2; Lurton for the Court, McKenna and Holmes in dissent without opinion. In an enabling act providing for the admission of Oklahoma to statehood, Congress stipulated that Guthrie would be the temporary capital until 1913. Accepting this provision, Oklahoma was admitted into the Union on an equal footing with the original states in 1907. Three years later, the Oklahoma legislature provided for the removal of the capital to Oklahoma City. When a suit challenging the action was instituted, the Oklahoma courts upheld the act of the state legislature.
The question was whether Congress, in its acknowledged discretion to admit new states, could impose conditions that would bind the state after its admission. Drawing upon a tradition stretching back to the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, the majority found the restrictions that Congress placed on Oklahoma invalid and upheld the state's right to locate its capital where it chose. Congressional discretion to admit a state was not subject to judicial review, but once the national legislature had acted the new states were entitled to all the governmental powers that the older ones enjoyed. Although the majority justices could find no constitutional language imposing such a check on congressional power, they did not hesitate to read the unwritten tradition of state equality into the Constitution itself.
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See also Territories and New States
— John E. Semonche
