amended. It ends by shielding three Article I clauses from being amended. This clause is among them. (The others are first and fourth clauses in Section 9, which were amendable after 1808.) Article Five provides that "no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate." Thus, no individual state may have its individual representation in the Senate adjusted without its consent. That is to say, an amendment that changed this clause to provide that all states would get only one senator (or three senators, or any other number) could become valid as part of the Constitution if ratified by three-fourths of the states; however, one that provided for some basis of representation other than strict numerical equality (for example, population, wealth, or land area), would require the unanimous consent of all the states. Denying the states their intended role as joint partners in the federal government by abolishing their equality in the Senate would, according to Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase (in Texas v. White), destroy the grounding of the Union. This Article V provision has been employed by those opposed to contemplated constitutional amendments that would grant the District of Columbia full representation in the Congress without also granting it statehood. Their argument is that an amendment that would allow a non-state district to have two senators would deprive the states of their equal suffrage in the Senate and would therefore require unanimous ratification by all the states. Those in favor of the amendment have argued that the States are merely entitled to equal suffrage amongst one another, and that granting the federal district Senate representation does not violate that right. Whether unanimous consent of the 50 states would be required for such an amendment to become operative remains an unanswered political question. Clause 2: Classification of senators; Vacancies After the first group of senators was elected to the First Congress (1789–1791), the senators were divided into three "classes" as nearly equal in size as possible, as required by this section. This was done in May 1789 by lot. It was also decided that each state's senators would be assigned to two different classes. Those senators grouped in the first class had their term expire after only two years; those senators in the second class had their term expire after only four years, instead of six. After this, all senators from those states