Article 4: Section 3. of The United States Constitution states;

"New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new State shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State, nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress."



Consent of the other states is thus not required, only majority votes in the Congress and the legislature of the state(s) involved. And this has happened before; as in the case of Kentucky and West Virginia splitting off from Virginia. If memory serves, Tennessee also broke off from North Carolina. I think there have been others as well.

In the 1980s, it was reported in the newspaper that a Southern California sociology professor (Irvine, I think - I forget his name); having studied the demographics, cultures, relative value systems, civic attitudes, and economic interests of the various regions of California; concluded that the various regions of California will never be of like mind in any of these important areas.

California was therefore "ungovernable", without one or another region trampling the rights and sensibilities of the other regions, no matter which dominated. He suggested a three way division of the state would be in order, along those cultural lines. That way each could be self governed by the people in that region, their rights and sensibilities unfettered by the differing perspective of the neighboring state.

He proposed a northern coastal state from the Oregon border to somewhere north of San Luis Obispo, reaching inland to the western edge of the Central Valley; an inland state from the Oregon Border to the Mountain ridges south of Bakersfield; and a state south of those ridges to the Mexican border, and up the coast range to include San Luis Obispo.

I personally thought it was a good idea in general; would lead to three very different states, each better suited to the locals, and would also improve each individual Californian's representation in the Senate. Smaller populations are always easier to manage. But the proposal was viewed only as "interesting" by the spoiliticans of the day. A collective yawn!


Of course the question begs, had that actually happened, would a San Francisco / Sacramento to Los Angeles high speed rail system have even been thought of? If it still would have been thought of, would the consequent diffusion of political power, have enabled a more reasoned approach to prevail. What about the Capital Corridor? The San Jouquins? They all being interstate, would have obviously been a horse of an entirely different color.

Too bad this professor seems to have been correct in his assessment of California's governability. In abject hindsight, had the state been split; and if the political leaders of any of the new states had run far amok, it would have been only one third the disaster.