Requirements to Be a Senator or Representative

Every member must also take an oath to support the Constitution before serving (Article VI). The founders meant the House to be the chamber closest to the people, and gave it the lightest requirements of any federal office; senators, who serve six-year terms, face a higher bar on age and citizenship.

Age is measured when a member takes office, not on Election Day. The House Historian records the case of John Young Brown of Kentucky, elected at 24: the House would not administer his oath until he turned 25, after the first session of his Congress was over. The framers first proposed 21, the voting age, before George Mason won a vote to raise it to 25.

Citizenship can be by birth or naturalization. The seven- and nine-year waiting periods were a compromise: long enough to guard against foreign influence, short enough not to shut new immigrants out of government.

Residence is in the state, “when elected.” Nothing in the Constitution requires a representative to live in the district they represent — living in the district never came up in the founders’ debates, and the district system emerged later as states organized their delegations. Where a member lives inside the state is a political question for voters, not a legal one.

The youngest current members are Maxwell Frost in the House, 4 years above the minimum, and Jon Ossoff in the Senate, 9 years above it. The youngest person ever to serve in the House, according to the House Historian, was William Claiborne of Tennessee, seated in 1797 at 22 — below the minimum, because the House judges its own members and chose to seat him. Ages for the whole of Congress are on Congress by the numbers.

Beyond age, citizenship and residence, the Constitution bars two groups:

• Federal officeholders. No one holding another federal office can be a member of Congress at the same time (Article I, Section 6). A member appointed to the cabinet or the bench must resign their seat.
• Insurrectionists. The 14th Amendment, Section 3 bars anyone who, having sworn as a federal or state officeholder to support the Constitution, engaged in insurrection or rebellion against it or gave aid or comfort to its enemies — unless Congress lifts the bar by a two-thirds vote of each chamber.

There is no education requirement, no requirement to have held office before, and no bar on a criminal record: a person convicted of a crime is not disqualified by the Constitution, though a chamber may still expel a sitting member by a two-thirds vote.

Each chamber is “the Judge of the Elections, Returns and Qualifications of its own Members” (Article I, Section 5), so the House and Senate decide whether a member-elect meets the requirements before swearing them in. Neither Congress nor the states can add requirements of their own: in U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton (1995) the Supreme Court held the Constitution’s list exclusive, which is why state-imposed term limits on members of Congress are invalid.

The non-voting members have requirements set by statute instead. The District of Columbia’s Delegate, for example, must be at least 25, a qualified D.C. voter, hold no other paid public office, and have lived in the District for the three years before the election (2 U.S.C. § 25a). See non-voting members.