What are the state governments responsibility to the people?

Answer 1

The duties of the State are to provide protection for its people.

I think President Kennedy got it right when he said 'the responsibility of government is to do for the people those things which they cannot do for themselves individually'. While the terms 'government' and 'state' are not synonyms, they are reasonable approximations for each other.

As a state does not exist in a vacuum, the people of the state would have to decide which are duties for the individual and those for the state acting through its government and agencies.

Answer 2

In the vertical theory of American federalism, there are two sovereigns, whose existence and effect on U.S. law and politics arise from and in the dual sovereigns theory. The U.S. Constitution enumerates limited, but often supreme, rights, powers, duties and obligations of the U.S. federal government. Residual rights, however, are reserved to the States, by Amendment X to the U.S. Constitution.

Thus, in American federalism, the people delegate their sovereignty both to the federal government, and to the government of the State of which they are citizens (State citizenship is distinct and specified in Amendment XIV to the United States Constitution). The assertion of State sovereignty has been associated with the States' Rights Movement, which advocates for greater status of the States, as compared with the federal government.

The State governments' responsibility to the people of any one particular U.S. State are largely defined in that State's Constitution, as well as in the U.S. Constitution, federal law of the United States Code, the rules promulgated thereunder in the Code of Federal Regulations, in State statute and the rules promulgated thereunder, and in State and Federal court judicial decision law.