No, a state cannot kick you out. If you are a U.S. citizen, no state government has the legal power to expel you from its borders or forbid you from entering, whether as punishment, policy, or preference. The Fourteenth Amendment, the constitutional right to travel, and a long line of court decisions all block that door. What states and courts can do is narrower: restrict where specific people go for specific reasons, force property owners off particular land with compensation, and confine individuals during genuine public health emergencies. The disputes worth knowing about live in the space between those lawful restrictions and outright banishment.
Why No State Can Banish You
The strongest protection is the right to travel freely between and within states. No single clause spells it out, but the Supreme Court has treated it as fundamental since the country’s founding, calling free movement between states “a necessary concomitant of the stronger Union the Constitution created.”1Constitution Annotated. Amdt14.S1.8.13.2 Interstate Travel as a Fundamental Right
In Saenz v. Roe (1999), the Court broke the right into three pieces: the right to enter and leave any state, the right to be treated as a welcome visitor while passing through, and the right of new residents to be treated the same as long-term ones.2Constitution Annotated. ArtIV.S2.C1.13 Right to Travel and Privileges and Immunities Clause The case struck down a California law that capped welfare benefits for new residents at whatever they would have received in their previous state, holding that even a benefits penalty on the decision to move violated the Fourteenth Amendment’s Privileges or Immunities Clause.3Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Saenz v. Roe, 526 U.S. 489 If a state cannot even reduce welfare payments to newcomers, it certainly cannot order anyone to leave.
Banishment as a criminal sentence runs into more than the travel right. The Fourteenth Amendment forbids any state from depriving a person of liberty without due process or denying equal protection under the law.4Congress.gov. Constitution of the United States – Fourteenth Amendment Ordering someone out of a state permanently strips their liberty to live, work, and maintain relationships there. The Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment adds another layer: in Trop v. Dulles (1958), the Supreme Court described banishment as threatening “the total destruction of the individual’s status in organized society.” That case involved federal loss of citizenship rather than state exile, but the reasoning travels. Most state appellate courts that have looked at banishment sentences have thrown them out, some on Eighth Amendment grounds, some on the right to travel, some on their own state constitutions. A judge who tries to sentence a defendant to permanent exile from the state should expect that sentence to be reversed on appeal.
What a State Can Do About Where You Go
Courts cannot banish you, but they can tell you where you are and aren’t allowed to be. The difference is that lawful restrictions are tied to a specific purpose, limited in scope, and subject to judicial review.
Probation and Parole Conditions
Judges and parole boards regularly impose geographic conditions on people under supervision. Federal law authorizes courts to require that a defendant “refrain from frequenting specified kinds of places,” and standard conditions often include language like “you must not knowingly enter [a named area] without first obtaining the permission of the probation officer.”5United States Courts. Chapter 3 – Place Restrictions (Probation and Supervised Release Conditions) A person on probation may be required to stay within a single county, or to keep out of a county or state where the victim lives. These restrictions expire when supervision ends, and violating them can put the person back in custody.
People on supervised release who relocate to another state usually sign an extradition waiver as part of the interstate transfer. If they violate their conditions, the sending state can bring them back without formal extradition proceedings.6ICAOS. Bench Book – 4.2.2 Uniform Extradition Act Considerations
Protective Orders
A court can order a person to stay a set distance from another individual, that person’s home, and their workplace. If the protected person lives in a different part of the state or in another state entirely, the order can effectively bar the restrained person from that area. It isn’t banishment because the restriction is anchored to protecting a specific person, not to exiling anyone.
Under federal law, a valid protective order issued in one state must be enforced by every other state, even without formal registration in the new jurisdiction.7Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 U.S. Code 2265 – Full Faith and Credit Given to Protection Orders The requirements are that the issuing court had jurisdiction over the parties and that the restrained person received notice and an opportunity to be heard. Authorities in the enforcing state are prohibited from tipping off the restrained person that the order has been registered unless the protected party asks for that notification.
Localized Exclusion Zones
The clearest line between lawful restriction and unconstitutional banishment shows up in localized exclusion zones. Telling someone to stay out of a neighborhood, a park, or the area around a school is far more likely to survive challenge than ordering them out of a state, because the person still has plenty of places to live.
Sex offender residency restrictions are the most common example. Many states prohibit registered offenders from living within a set distance of schools, playgrounds, or daycare centers. Courts have generally upheld these restrictions when reasonable places to live remain. When zones overlap so extensively that almost nowhere in the jurisdiction is available, courts have struck them down. A Georgia law that banned sex offenders from living within 1,000 feet of bus stops was invalidated because it left almost no habitable land in the state, which the court treated as de facto banishment.
Gang-related exclusion orders work the same way. A judge might bar a person from returning to a specific neighborhood as a condition of probation, and that will hold up if it is geographically limited and tied to a legitimate supervision purpose. Once an exclusion zone grows broad enough to function as exile from an entire city or state, it crosses the constitutional line.
When the Government Can Confine You In Place
The mirror image of being expelled is being held in one spot, and the state has real power to do that in narrow circumstances.
Quarantine and Isolation
States get quarantine authority from the police powers reserved to them under the Tenth Amendment, and the Supreme Court has recognized that power since Gibbons v. Ogden in 1824. The federal government has separate but narrower quarantine authority under 42 U.S.C. ยง 264, limited to preventing communicable disease from spreading from foreign countries or between states.8Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 USC 264 – Regulations to Control Communicable Diseases Federal law does not supersede state quarantine provisions unless the two directly conflict.
Both levels of government are constrained by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. Courts evaluating a quarantine weigh the individual’s liberty interest against the public health threat and ask whether the government used the least restrictive means available. A quarantine that is arbitrary or oppressive rather than medically necessary will not survive review.
Involuntary Civil Commitment
Every state has a process for involuntarily committing a person with a mental illness to a treatment facility, typically requiring proof that the individual poses a danger to themselves or others. In Addington v. Texas (1979), the Supreme Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment requires at least a “clear and convincing evidence” standard, higher than the usual civil standard but lower than the criminal one.9Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Addington v. Texas, 441 U.S. 418 Every state must provide a hearing, the right to an attorney, and periodic judicial review of the commitment.
When the Government Can Force You Off Your Property
A state can legally force you to leave your home if it needs your property for public use. You are free to live anywhere else, so this is not banishment, but it is the closest most people will come to being physically displaced by the government. The Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause requires “just compensation” whenever the government takes private property for public use.10Constitution Annotated. Amdt5.10.1 Overview of Takings Clause Compensation is generally set at fair market value.
The Supreme Court defined “public use” broadly in Kelo v. City of New London (2005), holding that economic redevelopment qualifies even when the property is transferred to a private developer rather than used for a road or school.11Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Kelo v. City of New London, 545 U.S. 469 That decision was controversial enough that many states passed laws narrowing their own eminent domain powers in response. If you face an eminent domain action, you can challenge both the “public use” justification and the amount of compensation offered.
Non-Citizens and Federal Deportation
Everything above applies to U.S. citizens. Non-citizens face a different legal landscape because the federal government has broad authority to remove people from the country entirely. States do not share that power. Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, grounds for deportation include overstaying a visa, failing to maintain visa conditions, committing certain crimes, and obtaining status through fraud.12Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 8 USC 1227 – Deportable Aliens Criminal grounds include drug offenses, firearms violations, domestic violence convictions, and “aggravated felonies,” a category much broader than the name suggests and one that can sweep in offenses classified as misdemeanors under state law. Even lawful permanent residents with green cards can be deported for these offenses.
This is the one setting in which the government can force a person out of the country, and it is a federal power, not a state one. A state acting on its own cannot deport anyone, and it cannot substitute a banishment order for the removal process it lacks authority to run.